Overview

• Whitechapel Gallery’s Apprehensions exhibition has reconstructed Hamad Butt’s 1990 Fly-Piece, reintroducing its live-fly lifecycle for the first time since the original vitrine was lost.
• Curator Dominic Johnson argues that Hirst “appears to have directly appropriated” Butt’s concept and likely encountered the prototype during their overlapping Goldsmiths studies.
• Hirst’s representatives dispute the chronology, suggesting ‘A Thousand Years’ may have first appeared in an earlier Modern Medicine show before Butt unveiled Fly-Piece.
• Charles Saatchi’s early purchase of Hirst’s A Thousand Years propelled Hirst’s career while Butt withdrew his work later in 1990 and died in 1994 at age 32.
• Damien Hirst has declined to comment on the appropriation claim and the debate over artistic originality and credit continues to shape the Young British Artists legacy.