Gary Hume
Gloss household paint on aluminium, beginning with a series of hospital doors.
Gary Hume was born in Kent in 1962, studied at Goldsmiths and was in Freeze, the 1988 warehouse exhibition organised by Damien Hirst that launched the Young British Artists. His Door paintings — life-sized, flatly accurate representations of the swing doors of a London hospital, painted in gloss household paint — made his name and he abandoned them in 1992, at the height of their success. What followed used the same material on aluminium panels: flowers, birds, figures and portraits reduced to flat overlapping areas of high-gloss colour with no modelling at all. He represented Britain at Venice in 1999.
Household gloss on aluminium is the whole condition question. The surface is a mirror, it shows every scratch, fingerprint and dust particle, it cannot be cleaned or retouched without leaving a visible difference in sheen, and it remains soft for a long time after painting. Damage is effectively irreversible, so condition dominates value here more than for almost any comparable artist. The Door paintings are the most sought group. Hume also produces screenprints, woodcuts and works on paper in editions of thirty to sixty.
If you own a work by Gary Hume
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.