“An involvement with death and decay, and ideas and life: the action of the world on things exists somewhere, and the colour exists somewhere else. And it’s fantastic.”
—Damien Hirst
As the title and the cover of the box indicate, the portfolio[s are] based on the artist’s spin paintings, an ongoing series initiated in 1995 and titled with long strings of descriptive words… To make [the paintings] Hirst stands on a ladder and pours paint onto large circular canvases as they are rotated at high speed by a spin machine in his studio. The idea of using spin art to make high art came from Hirst’s collaborative participation with the artist Angust Fairhurst (1966–2008)… To create the images that make up In a Spin, the Action of the World on Things I [and II], the artist attached etching copperplates to his spin machine, and drew on them as they rotated with a range of sharp tools that includes needles and screwdrivers1. He utilised circular, square and rectangular etching plates of varying sizes – sometimes extending the circular pattern beyond the edges of the plate and at others entirely containing it within the plates’ margins. A combination of soft and hard ground etching has added painterly splashes of colour to the more regular circling lines. – Tate Modern, 2009