Damien Hirst Charity

6 Jun 2011-31 May 2012

Overview

For twelve months, Charity - Damien Hirst’s twenty-two foot high painted bronze statue - will stand on the RWA’s balcony as a monumental and epic comment on social injustice. The Spastics Society collection box of a girl with teddy bear and leg in callipers was a familiar site in the 1960s and ‘70s, but fell out of fashion in the 1980s as a disempowering image of pity. Hirst has remade the splinted girl, scuffed her appearance and burgled her charity box to highlight the erosion of society’s values and put the issues on a pedestal. Charity was originally installed outside London’s famous White Cube gallery as part of Damien Hirst’s 2003 exhibition Romance in the Age of Uncertainty.