Last in the Damien Hirst at Houghton Hall Dada Infiltration mini-series

The Emperor’s New Spots..

Set the Spots Free  /  Free Art from Limitation
© Art Axis 2018

Direct action Work

Multicoloured paper spots 1cm dia scattered in front of one of many Damien Hirst spot paintings hung in Houghton Hall, Norfolk earlier this year.

Links to the three previous Damien Hirst at Houghton Hall photo Works are posted to our Flikr archive resource.

The Hats Make the Couple
Free Art from its Dark Prison
” Highlight of the Show “

Links in principle to London Dada protest Happening Tate Modern Transition from 2016

” The artist expands awareness and when the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness ” -William S. Burroughs

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*Addendum 2019; English artist Stuart Semple uses the LD floor spot protest concept in his admirable expose of Anish Kapoor’s mean-minded refusal to share his “blackest black” Vantablack paint with other artists.

YouTube link here

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Links to Damien Hirst‘s blatant plagiarism of London Dada’s ” Log Fish – An Unbelievable Treasure from the Deep ” for his cynical 2017 Venice show ” Treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable “

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• Where do the spots go from here?  ( Published 04 / 09/ 2018 ) Hirst exhausted his regimented spots way back so this year at Houghton Hall he continues his ground-breaking artistic genius by painting them slightly overlapping..

  Also at Houghton Hall, London Dada’s very own spots made an entrance, freed from their tedious 2D world to be scattered on the floor beneath the paintings as if freed, having escaped their stifling conformity.

  Artist Michael St.Mark now proposes a giant see-thru perspex container to occupy Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, over which visitors cross on suspended walkways, underneath which, near the floor, are a bank of industrial AC fans that set hundreds of thousands of mono or multicoloured wafer-thin environmentally- friendly plastic or paper spots in a perpetual swirling snowstorm within the container.
  Alternatively, and probably logistically more straightforward would be to fit the Hall with a  grid-like network or challenging maze of large ( c. 7 -8ft ) diameter tubes, through which the spots are blown and circulated – and of course also through which visitors walk. A marvellous and guaranteed crowd-pulling visually immersive spectacle and experience – and at last the spots are airborne en masse and literally surrounding the public, thus finally democratising them – and the idea herewith given to Maria Balshaw for safekeeping.

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• UPDATE January 2023
  After 4 years, it’s Louis Vuitton that obliges by first adopting London Dada’s concept and furthermore using Michael St.Mark’s drip spot painting technique from 2019
  

Section from Drip Spot Painting No. 2 (c) Michael St.Mark 2019