Summary
In London, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hirst produced a series of 'cabinet' pieces in which ranges of objects were presented in the type of glass vitrine typical of scientific display in a museum or laboratory. Including such remnants as the packaging for pharmaceutical drugs and chemicals (see Tate T07187), empty drinking glasses, cows' internal organs and fish, they also evoke the 19th century gentleman's hobby of collecting specimens. Related installations utilise large glass and steel chambers which function simultaneously as spaces for containment and confinement and invoke notions of cyclical birth and death. Referring to the aesthetic of Minimalism established in the 1960s, and developed in the 1980s, Hirst's glass cases reflect the contradictions implicit in the (scientific) pursuit of knowledge. They provide an ironic commentary on the inevitable loss of life as a body is taken apart for scientific examination: sterility and death accompanying identification and preservation… (read more)
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