Epigraph: 'The work which established Hirst's reputation in the British art world is entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (pl.324). It consists of a dead tiger shark floating in a tank of preservative fluid. The shark has been balanced and weighted so that it floats in the middle of its tank, just as though it were floating in its natural element.' - Artoday, Edward Lucie-Smith, Phaidon, 1995.