Hirst Opens Second Shop, Defies Slump With 3.50 Pound Keychains
By Scott Reyburn

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Damien Hirst has defied the slump in U.K. consumer spending by opening a second shop in London.
Other Criteria, the U.K. artist’s publishing and merchandising company, started the store this week at 14 Hinde Street in the Marylebone district. It sells works including some by Hirst himself ranging from his keyrings at 3.50 pounds ($5) to prints showing pills on mirror glass shelves, from an edition of 125, at 4,000 pounds ($5,800) each.

The first branch of Other Criteria opened in October in Bond Street next to Sotheby’s. The previous month, the auction house staged Hirst’s 111.5 million-pound sale, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever.” Since then, U.K retailers have suffered in the economic slump. Woolworths Group Plc, MFI Group Ltd. and Zavvi Group were chains that collapsed and closed stores.

“Other Criteria makes objects and books created by artists to an exceptional standard,” said Hirst in an e-mailed statement. “I don’t think art has ever been as popular as it is today and Other Criteria aims to sell affordable art of the highest quality to everyone who wants it.”

Next week the Marylebone store will be launching a limited- edition resin sculpture by U.K artist Sarah Lucas and French poet and artist Olivier Garbay. “Love is a Bird, Love is a Burden” is made in 10 colors in an edition of 15 and costs 3,000 pounds.
The Anglo-French pair has also collaborated to produce “The Mug,” a 365-page indexed book that explores the artists’ “ideas, thoughts and amusing familiar ways,” said the statement. It sells for 75 pounds.

Stuckists Online
Meanwhile, the Stuckists, a group of anti-conceptual artist- activists that is the scourge of the U.K.’s Turner Prize exhibitions and award ceremonies, has opened its own online store, http://www.redragtoabull.com, selling objects inspired by Hirst works.
Stuckists Jamie Reid (who designed graphics for the punk band the Sex Pistols), James Cauty and Billy Childish have produced a range of prints “recreated from random pixels found on the Interweb” and other products satirizing Hirst’s diamond skull and works by the Chapman Brothers and the urban artist D*Face.

“An exact copy of an image similar to an image of Hirst’s “For the Love of God,”’ from a numbered edition of 1,300, is priced at 13 pounds, said the Web site.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.
Last Updated: February 10, 2009 19:00 EST