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In a celeb-obsessed world, someone thought what could be better than three famous artists collaborating in a new exhibition. As it turns out, the answer is almost anything else could be better.
Triple Trouble is an exhibition of new collaborative works by uber-famous Damien Hirst alongside street artists Shepard Fairey and Invader – and hosted in Hirst’s own gallery.
It’s triple, and it’s troubled.
If you don’t already know their work, don’t worry — you do. It feels as if Hirst has been pickling things longer than your grandmother, Fairey’s OBEY posters are basically the wallpaper of modern rebellion, and Invader’s pixelated aliens are everywhere short of your talkie toaster.
So, what happens when three famous artists decide to remix each other’s art? You get a slop of cultural smoothie that tastes vaguely of fame, money and disappointment.
Room after room has been filled with superficially the same stuff, creating the effect of mass-produced art with price tags that ooze exclusivity.
A pickled space invader replaces Hirst’s shark, draining both of meaning. It’s not even an original alien design — just another one cloned from the 1970s computer game. In other rooms, Invader’s work slides into Fairey’s murals like an awkward party guest who didn’t get the memo.
For a brief, shining moment, I thought the Rubik’s Cube murals might save the day until I realised all the other murals were the same. Some might call it a pattern, but it’s really just repetition with a side of fatigue.
That’s the exhibition writ large – room after room of the same repeated concepts, churned out in an artist factory.
In one room, “Obey” hangs from the walls, an instruction to the viewer to comply with the requirement that you will pretend to be enjoying the art for no reason other than it’s by Three Famous People.
The overall impression of walking around whitewashed rooms filled with plastic art is of stepping into a griege McMansion filled with grey furniture, grey walls and owned by people with grey imaginations.
It’s all Turkey teeth and doorknocker dining chairs, and about as authentic.
The exhibition, Triple Trouble is at the Newport Street Gallery until 29th March 2026 and is free to visit.
It’s open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm.
Once the exhibition closes, expect the art to be snapped up by excited collectors purely because of who made it, rather than for any innate artistic merit that the original concepts might once have contained.
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