Damien Hirst Pharmacy

Damien Hirst Pharmacy at the Baltic visited 04/02/2010



Pharmacy has been sent to the Baltic as part of the Tate Connects, a program established in 2008 to encourage collaboration between galleries and promote wide ranging public access to national collections.

Hear follows an extract from the Baltic publicity on the work

'Medicine has been a consistent theme in Hirst's practice. He has parodied the idea that medicine can cheat death. The installation 'Pharmacy' (1992) explores these ideas. The installation is an apparently functioning pharmacy, complete with counter and floor to ceiling cabinets holding preparations and drugs. The clinical an authoritative atmosphere connects the laboratory or hospital with the museum or gallery space. The work suggests that medicine, like art, provides a belief system which can be seductive but deceptive'

Although as the extract says 'Pharmacy' can be seen in part comment on the art world/market 'like art, provides a belief system which can be seductive but deceptive' I found this reference pretty irrelevant to my experience of the work. On a quiet Thursday afternoon, I was able to spend time in the space alone all bar the attendant sheepishly reading private eye, really looking at all the little boxes in rows, blocks of color and pattern, it really was an amalgamation of museum/situation and gallery. I found the unoccupied desk particularly intriguing. On the counter where four apothecary bottles placed to represent the four elements earth, wind, air and fire, referring back to practices of old and the passage of time and beliefs, the faith that we now have in medicine or the 'Pharmacy' was once placed in the apothecary I don't think this serves as much to highlight progress as our need to have an authority where we can go to ease our pain take our burden, we are like the fly's being drawn to the homey on mushroom stools in Hirst's 'Pharmacy' which are then zapped by the insect-o-cutor it is pre determined that our search for a cure for all our ills and an escape from death will be unfruitful.