Dead Shark in a Glass Box set for Comeback

By Gobshot On November 16, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Jaws may well drop, but it’s true – Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) – known in artistic circles as Dead Shark in a Glass Box – will make an appearance once again this April (2012) at Tate Modern. When explaining the finer details of the forthcoming exhibition, Tate Modern’s clever use of irony in its description of the work as an ‘Iconic Sculpture’ has certainly not been lost on the editors at Spitting Bullets.

To celebrate the return of the dead shark’s reappearance in front of the confused (although this isn’t the original shark – ?), Spitting Bullets has commissioned guest poet Simon Sharpe to write what we can only describe as an ‘Hirstian Sonnet’.

And so, for the first time, this poem can now be enjoyed by all, as we reveal…

Dead Shark, Glass Box, Ha Ha

by Simon Sharpe

Dead Shark in a Glass Box,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…what?
Dead Shark in a Glass Box,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…no, really, come on!
Dead Shark in a Glass Box,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…no, stop it now, ha ha ha ha ha
Dead Shark in a Glass Box,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…hee hee hee hee hee
Dead Shark in a Glass Box,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…ooooooo, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo
Dead Shark in a Glass Box,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…stop it my sides hurt.
Dead Shark in a Glass Box.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…where has my head gone?

More Poetry

For a copy of this poem and to receive information about Simon Sharpe’s new collection of British Contemporary Art Poetry (which remains purely in concept form), please send a stamped, addressed, pickled sea creature of your choice, suspended in a Thermos flask, to the White Cube Gallery (144-152 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3TQ).

If you’re lucky, you may find that ‘Soused Shrimp in a Thermos‘ is exhibited alongside ‘Lights on a Floor in a Room‘ by switched-on artist Kitty Kraus: