On the spot

Damien Hirst has been accused of copying the paintings of indigenous Australian artists. “The Veil” series, recently shown at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, features 24 paintings made up of coloured dots. Barbara Weir, a painter from the Utopia community north-east of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory, said the work bore a striking resemblance to the dot art of Polly Ngale, her aunt, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye, a pioneer of contemporary indigenous art. Hirst said the spot paintings, priced between £350,000 and £1.2 million, were inspired by Georges Seurat and Pierre Bonnard, the French Postimpressionists.