thumb|Freeze Exhibition Catalogue
Freeze is the title of an art exhibition that took place in July 1988 in an empty London Port Authority building (the old fire station) at Surrey Docks in London Docklands. Its main organiser was Damien Hirst. It was significant in the subsequent development of the Young British Artists.
Organisation
thumb|upright|right|[[Damien Hirst was the organizer of Freeze.]]
Freeze was orchestrated by Damien Hirst, who was then a student at Goldsmiths College of Art. He was assisted by Luigi Scalera, a young architecture graduate working for the London Docklands Development Corporation, who identified and made available the derelict building for the exhibition together with modest funding for painting the interior. Hirst and his collaborators intentionally imitated the look of Charles Saatchi's first gallery in St John's Wood that had opened a few years earlier. Saatchi, an art collector, attended Freeze and purchased a piece of art by Mat Collishaw. Michael Craig-Martin, a tutor at Goldsmiths Art College,
Fairhurst, along with other students from Goldsmiths College of Art, were instrumental in organizing Freeze.<!-- NOTE TO EDITORS: MYARTSPACE IS A SITE WITH EDITORIAL CONTROL, NOT A PERSONAL BLOG.-->
The exhibition was sponsored by the London Docklands Development Corporation and Olympia and York.
Legacy
There was one contemporary review of the original exhibition written by Sacha Craddock, which appeared in The Guardian.
The success inspired a second exhibition several months later, Freeze 2, featuring some artists from the first exhibition and some new faces from other London art schools. The BBC filmed the exhibition and interviewed some contributors.
Freeze influenced a group of artists later to be identified as the Young British Artists (YBAs—often written yBas). The actual list of members in this art group remained fluid from project to project.