Art versus repulsion in Britain's art world

1.00pm - By TERRY KIRBY

In a huge tank of water, sides of beef and a cow's head are suspended from hooks, brains fry in a pan, a skull sits on a butcher's block and strings of sausages are draped everywhere. Swimming serenely around these gory visions of death are dozens of brightly coloured tropical fish.

Nearby, a gorilla is staring at its own severed arm, the bottom half of a torso sits on a toilet, and a family of pigs, covered in tiny beads, go for a stroll, clearly elated that their baby has sprouted wings. Above floats a zeppelin made from Coca-Cola tins, and a Christ-figure constructed in Marlboro Lights hangs from the wall.

These provocative images greet the visitor to the unique joint show by artists Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst, at Tate Britain in London.

The show is the first time the three major British contemporary artists, all friends who met at Goldsmith's College in the mid-1980s, have worked together on a joint idea to produce mainly new works. It is also the first time a museum has held such a show of original pieces, which are normally revealed through private galleries.

Its title is In A Gadda Da Vida, taken from the 1968 recording by the psychedelic rock band Iron Butterfly, in which the lead singer slurred the words In the Garden of Eden. Hirst and co have used this to give themselves free rein on ideas of sex, death, love and destruction, as well as contemporary themes such as the war in Iraq and the role of women.

Hirst uses the concept of Adam and Eve in two installations. In Adam and Eve Exposed, two figures lie covered in sheets on operating tables in adjacent glass boxes. Both have only their genitals exposed by cut-outs in the shape of an apple. Both are breathing gently.

In the second, Adam and Eve Towards the End, the artist's description of what is involved says it all: "Glass and steel vitrine, children's toys, jigsaw puzzle pieces, half a bureau, tweed jacket, cardigan, prosthetic limb, pornographic magazines, cigarettes and other gentlemen's paraphernalia, half a dressing table, dressing gown, underwear, ornaments, medicines, magazines, tampons and other ladies' paraphernalia."

Some familiar Hirst devices are on display - a calf in formaldehyde and a huge black disc of dead flies in resin, as well as the aforementioned fish tank. Several stunning and intricate mosaics consisting of thousands of butterfly wings create a multi-coloured effect akin to stained glass.

There are also live tropical butterflies, incongruously placed inside what appears to be an English garden greenhouse. Butterflies also form the pattern for the wallpaper that each artist has designed for part of the exhibition space.

Lucas exhibits some well-known traits: collages exploring the exploitation of women - such as papering the inside of a real lorry cab with Page Three-style pictures with bottom halves of female torsos and images made from flyers for take-away pizza. Again, her own description of something called Spam Zeppelin is sufficient: "Resin, acrylic paint, fibreglass, wanking mechanism."

She gleefully plunders pop songs for her titles: All We are Saying is Give Pizza Chance and F--- the Egg Man, her comment on the Iraq conflict.

Hirst and Lucas came to fame during the Young British Artists explosion of the 1990s. Fairhurst is less well known and this show gives him the attention he deserves, including one display taking up almost a entire wall, consisting of the blurred front pages of a series of six newspapers, one a week for the whole of last year.

One of the curators of the exhibition said this was a far from ordinary show. "We had to build a special reinforced floor just in case something happened to Damien's fish tank - we have the Tate's library below us. The animals do cause problems - the fish and butterflies have to be fed every day and we have to control the amount of light for the butterflies. We needed a diver to put the final pieces of the installation in place."

She shudders slightly: "And when those flies first arrived the smell of the resin just would not go away."

The Tate was aware some might be concerned about the origins of the butterflies. "We are concerned about this and have worked with Damien to ensure they are properly bred and do not come from endangered species. But I still think about someone having to pull off all those wings.

"I think the images are wonderful, but then you remember what they are made off. That's the thing about Damien, the fine line he walks between beauty and repulsion."

At the entrance to the show is a neon sign by Fairhurst which warns: "Stand Still and Rot". The exhibition seems to confirm that, as they approach middle age, these Young British Artists are doing anything but standing still and are still using the formaldehyde to keep the rot at bay.

- INDEPENDENT