Damien Hirst: Natural History – an ‘empty and artificial’ show

Show brings together some 25 formaldehyde works created by Hirst over past 30 years

This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home artwork
Damien Hirst’s This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home, 1996
(Image credit: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)

In 1995, Damien Hirst created one of the “seminal” sculptures of our times, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, the work consisted of a dead shark floating in a tank of formaldehyde, “a malevolent presence trapped in an eerily artificial sea”. To look at it was “to confront the finality of death face-to-face from behind the safety of glass”; I, for one, left “awestruck”.

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