Over a period of five months, Quinn extracted systematically from his own body eight pints of blood, the equivalent of his total blood volume. Combined with anticoagulant and antibiotic, this material was then frozen solid in a life cast of the artist’s own head, and displayed in a refrigeration unit as Self, 1991 (Saatchi Collection www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk). Treading the fine line between life and death, art and life, the work’s survival is sntirely dependent upon a constant electricity supply. Despite its vulnerability, this work can be interpreted as a bid for immortality: the body;s life fluid is normally circulated and renewed, but this accumulation is intended to remain in its present form indefinitely. Quinn worked with imprints of his own body, in latex sheaths, lead casts. They are manipulated and cut, brutalized and altered. This print is related to a sculptural work Template for my future plastic surgery (aged 80), 1992 .

The work comes from the Londonportfolio, one of the most significant British print publications of the 1990s. .

Multiple Choice: Prints by Young British Artists, The British Council 1997

Further reading:
Contemporary British Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and The Paragon Press, 1995 (texts by Jeremy Lewison, Patrick Elliott and Duncan Macmillan)