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

Based on his iconic Spin Paintings – the ebullient series the artist has incessantly developed for nearly two decades since the early 1990s – Damien Hirst created the print portfolios In a Spin, the Action of the World on Things, Volume I and Volume II ) with a similar technique: copperplates were first attached to a spin machine, then linear forms were drawn with various sharp tools such as screwdrivers and needles as the machine rotated.

Adopting a populist approach to artmaking, Hirst drew inspiration from Blue Peter — the UK children’s television programme that he grew up with — in devising the spin technique. Following his initial experimentation in 1992, Hirst hosted a spin art stall with fellow artist Angus Fairhurst at the street fair ‘A Fete Worse than Death’ in the subsequent year, where members of the public were invited to create their own spin paintings. As he continued to refine the process, Hirst invested in his own spin machine, and substituted rectangular canvases with circular ones, onto which household paints were directly poured from a ladder to accentuate the explosive centrifugal energy.