“From the point you light one to when you stub it out, it’s death.”[1]

‘The Abyss’, a stainless steel cabinet containing neatly arranged rows of used cigar and cigarette butts, was auctioned at ‘Beautiful Inside My Head Forever’ at Sotheby’s in 2008. The work incorporates approximately 12,000 cigarettes.

A common reference point in his work, Hirst has described smoking as, “like a very diluted way of facing death, constantly.”[2]