DAMIEN HIRST Beans and Chips, from The Last Supper, 1999

Largely inspired by the often-fragile relationships between life and death and science and art, Damien Hirst’s work encompasses the medium of sculpture, paint and assemblage. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is one of Hirst’s earliest outputs but among his most notable – this piece exhibits an Australian tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde and is just one among many of his works that tackles the taboo surrounding mortality; Hirst has stated that "The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact." In keeping with his tradition of using animals and insects throughout his art, Hirst received acclaim for his Butterfly Paintings – a series for which he fixed the bodies of dead butterflies onto monochrome, gloss-painted canvasses. Hirst was among the Young British Artists movement alongside the likes of Emin, Bulloch and Gillick and counted artists such as Jeff Koons and Francis Bacon among his influences. Less

Largely inspired by the often-fragile relationships between life and death and science and art, Damien Hirst’s work encompasses the medium of sculpture, paint and assemblage. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is one More