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[whataweirdworldtolivein]

In and Out Of Love

In 1991, Damien Hirst presented In and Out of Love, his first solo exhibition in London. Taking up two floors of the Woodstock Street Gallery between June 21 and July 26, 1991, the exhibition comprised a room of live butterflies and an installation titled Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays.

Hirst’s original installation was composed of two parts: on the ground floor of the gallery and the basement. The ground floor installation, which visitors entered from the street, In and Out of Love (White Paintings and Live Butterflies), consisted of an artificial humid environment designed for breeding butterflies. The butterflies were hatched and flew free until they died. A white Formica table held four bowls of sugar water to feed the butterflies. The walls were lined with five monochrome primed canvases on which were attached pupae. Plants were placed below them to attract the butterflies to settle back on each canvas after hatching. In the basement, In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays) featured eight paintings in bright pastel colors, each with dead butterflies pressed into their surfaces of high gloss paint. The paintings were originally unframed before being acquired by the Center. Nearby, four ashtrays loaded with cigarette butts were placed on a table, redolent of the aftermath of a crowded private view. Around the room were arranged four large cubes, each with a hole on every side. These cubes had appeared singly in earlier work by Hirst from which flies were hatched, but in In and Out of Love nothing hatched from them, and they multiplied.

Hirst described In and Out of Love as his most conceptual work at the time, creating the entire life cycle of butterflies in the upstairs space and then turning those butterflies into art downstairs, thus posing a fundamental question about the line between art and life. The work caused critical excitement. A detail of one of his new butterfly paintings had already been reproduced on the cover of the pilot issue of Frieze magazine in May that year. “Both spaces are called In and Out of Love,” Hirst explained in an interview with the magazine about his installation. “One's the romantic view of it, the other is the harsh reality. I'm not sure which is which.”

[whataweirdworldtolivein]

REFUSE is presented by a Singapore-based experimental band called The Observatory. It is an inter-media exhibition about music, mushrooms, and de-composition. The exhibition combines mycology design, scenography installation, archive arrangement, moving image, and guest curation. REFUSE draws on the band's past and presents influences, bringing together their interests in fungi and mycelial networks to explore the twin ideas of decomposition and composition from biological and musical perspectives. The presentation comprises a time-based installation space and archive, and speaks to The Observatory's constantly evolving methodologies, the communities that surround them, as well as their important place in the Singapore music scene.