British artist Damien Hirst rose to prominence in the 1980s alongside the loosely grouped Young British Artists in London. Hirst creates work relating to themes of technology and beauty, with an emphasis on materials with shock value and taboo topics such as mortality and death. After inheriting the contents of his grandmother’s old medicine cabinet, Hirst began a series of constructed glass-faced cabinets to house pharmaceutical packaging. Is Nothing Sacred, 1997, in Glenstone’s collection, is a later work in this series. Its title questions the division between publicity and privacy with respect to ailments of the body and mind. The order of objects in the cabinet is aesthetic as opposed to practical, calling attention to the superficial rather than clinical impact of these products, characteristically probing issues of birth, death, and consumer culture.

–From the Glenstone Field Guide