Damien Hirst assembled this relatively small - by his standards - piece while living in a crowed flat near a shoe factory in Southeast London early in 1990, just prior to his first solo exhibition at Woodstock Street.
Hirst was intrigued by the factory's machinery, the noise, the chemicals used, the texture of leather, even the smell of the place. Although he was not interested in the actual aesthetics of shoes, the chemicals used in their manufacture excited him artistically. (Hirst is known to it is known to have used various medicines and chemicals during his student years at Goldsmiths College in the late 80s.) Hirst collected the entire range of chemicals necessary to assemble a shoe and arranged them in a small vitrine, and then weighed the whole lot (355Kg). He added his own weight to this and called the piece 430 kg per step - prophetic perhaps of the difficult journey towards immortality on which he had already embarked.