The Dorsal Fin

According to the Coventry Telegraph, London’s Tate Moden art museum will feature Damien Hirst as its star exhibitor in 2012 when the summer Olympics come to London. Hirst is known for encasing various species of animals in formaldehyde and presenting them as works of art. Perhaps, one of his most famous works is “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” which is essentially an encased tiger shark carcass suspended in formaldehyde.

“The Physical Impossibility of Death…” was commissioned for £50,000 in 1991 and was completed in 1992. the Coventry Telegraph reports that it was later sold for about £6.5 million. A 2006 New York Times article reports that the original shark had begun deteriorating when the item was sold. Hirst volunteered to replace the shark and enlisted the help of Oliver Crimmen, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London, to better preserve the second shark, which was housed in the original case.

The two tiger sharks used in Hirst’s work were caught by Queensland fishermen, who were hired by Hirst.

Real Business’ Lush hooks customers with gruesome window display reports about an anti-finning window display appearing at Lush cosmetics stores. According to the article, a former Lush employee and performance artist, Alice Newstead, has been painting herself silver and hanging herself from the ceiling in “a dramatic illustration of shark finning.” The display is part of a campaign between Lush and Sea Shepherd to end overfishing.

Newstead first appeared in the display in London last year…

The display appeared in Paris earlier this month, and the next stop is New York City.

A woman being suspended by hooks from the ceiling of a cosmetics store is certainly a “unique” way to promote shark conservation, to say the least, but it does seem like the display is grabbing the attention of people. Hopefully, that attention will, in turn, lead to an increased awareness about the rapidly declining number of sharks, due to finning and over-fishing.