Anna Randal for Art-Sheep
Photos by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.
Damien Hirst, one of the most productive and provocative artists of his generation, returns to his series, Natural History, with his work Gone But Not Forgotten. After almost 25 years since Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding, his famous fish cabinets, the artist this time imprisons a gilded skeleton of a three-meter mammoth in a colossal steel and glass vitrine.
As explained by the artist, “The mammoth comes from a time and place that we cannot ever fully understand. Despite its scientific reality, it has attained an almost mythical status and I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank. It’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful, it is gone but not forgotten”.
via designboom
Damien Hirst – Gone But Not Forgotten, 2014