Gary Hume valuation
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.
What a work by Gary Hume is worth
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Bio
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.
Freeze, Venice and Liberty Grip
Hume was in Freeze in 1988 and in East Country Yard, the warehouse show organised by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas in 1990. After leaving the doors in the mid-1990s he painted simplified images in gloss on aluminium, often taken from photographs of celebrities and animals, and he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Around 2005 he went back to the doors, pairing them as couples.
His bronze Liberty Grip, of 2008, stands on a riverside path at North Greenwich as part of The Line sculpture walk. For a painting, the title, date and gallery provenance identify it, and its condition should be described in detail.
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