LONDON, ENGLAND.- Damien Hirst reaffirmed his position as one of the leading contemporary artists of the 21st century this evening (October 18th, 2004), when all 168 lots of original items from the celebrated Pharmacy restaurant sold at Sotheby's London for a total of £11,132,180 ($20,063,528), far in excess of the pre-sale estimate of £3.5 - 4.9 million. His international status attracted more than 500 people into the saleroom, many of whom spent the hour before the sale queuing on New Bond Street eager to bid for a piece of Pharmacy's history.

Oliver Barker, Senior Director of Sotheby's Contemporary Art department, said: "Tonight's sensational results are the culmination of months of hard work and the vindication of Damien's enduring appeal. We established several new records, not only in terms of the prices achieved but also in as much as it was the first time there has been an entire sale of works consigned by a living artist. Damien has definitely earned his place in art history - he is the utopian artist of our time."

Damien was unable to attend the sale in person but was called by Frank Dunphy, his business manager, with the extraordinary results. "Suddenly my restaurant venture seems to be a success," he said.

The sale featured the entire range of objects that Hirst designed for the restaurant, and every single lot found a buyer, with some pieces selling for many multiples of their pre-sale estimates. The first lot of the sale, a pair of martini glasses, estimated at £50-70, sold for £4,800, nearly one hundred times the pre-sale estimate.

The highest price of the evening was paid a large medicine cabinet, entitled The Fragile Truth, which fetched £1,237,600, establishing a new auction record price for a work by Hirst. A second work, also a large medicine cabinet, The Sleep of Reason, sold for £1,069,600. Both had been estimated at £400,000-600,000.

The 10 coloured butterfly paintings all sold above estimates with lots 27 and 57, Full of Love and Love a-dub-dub, both fetching £364,000, auction record prices for butterfly paintings.

In addition to the works from the restaurant, Hirst donated a specially produced vibrant seven foot diameter pill painting, a one-off, from a series which he has not developed since 1990. It sold for £173,600 in aid of Scope, the charity for disabled people, of which the artist is an ardent supporter. This brings the total for works sold by the artist at Sotheby's in aid of Scope to £554,400.

The sale included two further works produced in 2004 for charity. A pill painting, Amnesia, sold to benefit the charity Strummerville, sold for £162,400 and a painting entitled The Bowl of Hygeia and the Serpent of Epidaurus, sold for £72,000 to benefit the Royal Academy Exhibition Patrons Group. Strummerville is a charitable foundation for the production of new music, which was formed following Joe Strummer's untimely death.

Other interesting results and facts from this evening's sale included the pair of Damien Hirst Pill Stools (lot 8) that sold for 40 times their pre-sale estimate, realising £19,200 against an estimate of £400-£600. These were not the only items to far exceed expectations. Further examples included.