Amid Layoffs, Damien Hirst’s Company Listed $1.77 M. in Covid Payments – RisePEI

Based on paperwork filed with the U.Okay. authorities, a Jersey-based firm owned by artist Damien Hirst was given £1.31 million ($1.77 million) in furlough funds in 2020, the identical 12 months it laid off dozens of employees.

That firm, Science (UK), is utilized by Hirst to fabricate his artwork, which has taken the type of modern ready-made objects that rake in thousands and thousands of {dollars} at public sale, summary work, and gigantic sculptures meant to recall archaeological treasures. Final 12 months, the Artwork Newspaper reported that the corporate owned £42.7 million in art.

In documents filed with the U.Okay. authorities’s Corporations Home company, Science (UK) listed 156 staff on the finish of 2020. Through the course of that identical 12 months, nonetheless, it lower 63 employees in a course of recognized within the U.Okay. as making redundancies.

A consultant for Gagosian gallery, which represents Hirst, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

The federal government-run furlough program was meant to maintain companies financially impacted by the pandemic from shedding staff. Employees who spoke to the Artwork Newspaper for its 2021 report mentioned that the funds obtained by Science (UK) have been meant to help them throughout lockdown till they might safely return to the studio for jobs that would not be executed remotely.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has created vital operational and monetary pressures on the group and the artwork market extra typically,” the Corporations Home audit notes.

Individually from Science (UK), Hirst had himself reportedly claimed £15 million in emergency Covid funding in 2020. He was mentioned to owe greater than £100 million to Science (UK) on the time.

Even earlier than the pandemic, Science (UK) had been slicing again on its operations. In 2018, he laid off 50 employees as half of a bigger effort by Hirst to “focus on his art,” he mentioned. Across the identical time, he purchased a brand new studio in London’s Soho district that value £40 million.

The pandemic pressured to Hirst to rethink his enterprise as soon as extra. Previous to Covid, he was scheduled to have a serious retrospective on the Central Academy of Positive Artwork in Beijing, however that present was canceled as soon as lockdown started.

Since 2020, Hirst has maintained an exhibition schedule. For an exhibition presently on view at Gagosian in New York, Hirst is exhibiting summary work and works from his broadly panned “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable” sequence, together with sculptures of Disney characters that have been made to look as if they’d been introduced up from the depths of the ocean. The entire works in that present have been from 2020 or earlier. He additionally has a present of the readymades that launched him to fame at Gagosian’s London location.