“It is [about] when you are in two minds about something.”[1]
‘This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home’ (1996) is an early work from the ‘Natural History’ series, consisting of a bisected pig. The animal is contained within two glass and steel tanks which slide mechanically “like a bacon slicer; slowly, tragically” to unite then separate the halves in perpetuity.[2] Titled after the nursery rhyme, the piece was part of a number of new works which incorporated moving elements, presented in 1996 at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in the exhibition ‘No Sense of Absolute Corruption’. In a similar manner to the rotating spin paintings unveiled at the exhibition, and the tri-vision billboard ‘The Problems with Relationships’ (1996), there is an implied endlessness to the movement incorporated into the works.
[1] Damien Hirst cited in ‘Like People, Like Flies: Damien Hirst Interviewed’, Mirta D’Argenzio, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989–2004’ (Electa Napoli, 2004), 138
[2] Damien Hirst cited in ‘An Interview with Damien Hirst’, Stuart Morgan, ‘No Sense of Absolute Corruption’ (Gagosian Gallery, 1996), 26