This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Damien Hirst: Relics and Fly Paintings at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London, the second phase of Hirst’s long-term takeover of the space. This immersive exhibition brought together a number of bodies of work, prompting reflections on darkness and death, the past and the future. Among the series illustrated in the book are Relics—cast bronze memento mori depicting corpses, skeletons, and mummies—and Fly Paintings, canvases incorporating real insects that offer a hauntingly detached perspective on human existence.

The book includes individual, detail, and installation photographs of more than fifty paintings and sculptures that were featured in the exhibition. “Danse Macabre,” an essay by art historian Richard Calvocoressi, examines Hirst’s practice via literary and psychoanalytic explorations of related themes in the works of Dante and Freud.