Simple, harrowing and playful. Damien Hirst at Tate Modern

Damien Hirst is hailed as a rock n roll artist and one of the most successful living artist of all time. My perception of him before going to the exhibition wasn't a good one. I thought him pretentious and just wanting to shock, that his work held no real artistic value and he was a one trick pony... er, calf.

His exhibition taught me that this ability to shock and challenge perception of what art or even what is acceptable, is exactly what it's about. Hirst takes something simple, that you don't even register, like a cow's head and puts in a box full of flies to see how over time the head deteriorates.

It's this scientific curiosity that creates the most beguiling artwork. From rooms of nothing but medical equipment that perfectly illustrate the clinical, sterile, coldness of the most caring profession. And taking butterflies to make stain glass paintings.

Some may call this cruel; taking animals both alive and dead to use as art. However, I'm sure the world said the same about Jackson Pollock when he simply splattered paint on the floor or when the Sex Pistols used the word sex, fuck and bollocks openly. What Damien Hirst is doing, is showing us the brutal beauty of life. How fragile and worthless it is.

As we walked through the calf in formaldehyde, we treated what was a real life like an exhibit in a zoo. Musing and using it to elevate our sense of self and affirm our existence. But what Hirst was telling us that life is commodity and in the grand scheme of things, you ain't worth a thing.