for a major new work, damien hirst returns to his ‘natural history’ series with the reveal of ‘gone but not forgotten’, the gilded skeleton of a three-meter tall woolly mammoth, encased in a colossal steel and glass vitrine. ‘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.’ hirst explains of the piece ‘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.’ the work has been donated to aid amfAR‘s work in the fight against AIDS.