Damien Hirst, 'Life is Normal', 1995

'Life is normal'
Damien Hirst b. 1965
Long sleeved T Shirt (Screen printed)
Size M
1995
£20.00
2013.013



I had completely forgotten that I owned this but with the family away I have had an opportunity to sort out my groaning T shirt shelf. By the sedimentary system of filing I use for such things this had found its way to the bottom of the pile. I have too many T shirts. I also have a Barbara Kruger T shirt which carries the slogan 'It's a small world until you have to clean it' - this was a present from my wife Lynn, a souvenir of an arty junket in New York, oh how she must have laughed as she flexed our credit card. She bought our son a cuddly tortoise puppet, I don't like wearing this either, T shirt or tortoise.

I mainly wear T shirts associated with sailing events, to the point of disintegration as it happens.

Hirst's T shirt  reminds me of the 'slogan' T shirts that Katherine Hamnett made fashionable in the 80's, also it reminds me of Wham, the 'Wake me up before you GO GO' period, when George Michael might have been described as bouffant. A time when in order to look cool you simply had to walk around with an irritating and slightly in your face truism on your chest like '98% don't want Pershing'...

Hirst's T shirt injects a vapid nothingness into this 'space' it's just stupid. It inflicts embarrassment on the wearer to the power of 10. Also the neck is tight. I wore it once but never actually went out of the house in it!

However this discovery is not a tail of woe... for it also reminded me of how I bought it by mail order from the brilliant 'supastore MIDDLESBROUGH' exhibition in Linthorpe Road in 1995.

I have found the catalogue and it is priceless, a collection put together out of association and probably a bit of blagging, a snapshot of who could be got, who was who, including a hefty clump of soon to be Turner Prize nominees and winners.

Runners, riders and shot in the paddock, they are all there recorded for posterity at a time before word processors were in widespread use in galleries in Middlesbrough. Obviously things are different, though not necessarily better, now. In those far off days before email (yes really) it was OK to make do with a crappy old typewriter and a telephone (maybe with buttons) although this typewriter has a sans serif typeface. To me (and I suspect only to me and the person who bought it) this says its a bit 'gallery'. Some line drawings made with a biro and a photocopier complete the production. If one was being uber critically aware, it might be described as a homage to the 'zine'. It is lifted by the fiddly circular binders.

There would have been a great case for buying one of everything in it. It taunts me with the stupidity of what I actually bought. Slideshow here... enjoy.





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