Triple Trouble: When Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, and Invader Collide at Newport Street Gallery

Newport Street Gallery is about to host a creative collision unlike anything the London art world has seen. Opening 10th October 2025 (evening preview 9th October) and running through 29 March 2026, Triple Trouble brings together three of the most influential, and mischievous, artists of our time: Shepard Fairey, Damien Hirst, and Invader.

Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Presented in association with Heni and curated by Connor Hirst, the exhibition spans all six gallery spaces, forming a high-energy meeting point between street art, pop iconography, and contemporary conceptualism. It’s a dialogue, sometimes harmonious, sometimes volatile, between three artists whose practices have reshaped visual culture, from the white cube to the street wall.

Looks like they’re having fun! Image Copyright Invader

A Clash Worth Having

In Triple Trouble, Fairey, Hirst, and Invader fuse their visual vocabularies into new collaborative works. Familiar motifs are everywhere, Fairey’s OBEY propaganda graphics, Hirst’s dots and formaldehyde precision, and Invader’s pixelated mosaics, yet each has been reimagined, merged, and mischievously re contextualised.

Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Visitors can expect collaborative Spin Paintings and Spot Artworks, merging Hirst’s hypnotic structure with Fairey’s political punch and Invader’s invasion. Rubik’s Cube mosaics, re-envisioned on an epic scale, depict cultural icons from science, music, and rebellion. Around the gallery, pill cabinets, tanks, and light boxes hum with the tension between order and disruption, between the polished and the punk.

Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Three Voices, One Spirit of Rebellion

For Shepard Fairey, collaboration was never about harmony but about risk:

“I’ve long respected both artists because they’re intelligent, conceptual, and relentless in their visions,” he explains. “Damien and Invader are visual and conceptual problem-solvers who set their own rules. A clash of styles is a risk worth taking—and creativity can solve almost all problems. Malcolm McLaren once told me, ‘A glorious failure is better than a boring success.’ So what could possibly go wrong?”

Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

For Damien Hirst, the thrill lies in difference:

“What I’ve really enjoyed is the powerful sensibility of both these guys—it pushes me to think more, down to millimetres and distances between things and colours. Artists can be notoriously difficult, but these two are great people as well as great artists. You have to get a hold of people and push them away at the same time to engage them with a kind of violence they’re unprepared to accept—and Shepard and Space both do that.”

Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

And for Invader, the collaboration was an artistic adventure conducted across continents and devices:

“Combining our three styles could only result in some astonishing artworks. The creative process itself was very exciting, with hundreds of messages, ideas, and artworks travelling back and forth between the three of us. It was a great adventure, and I hope the public will enjoy discovering this exhibition as much as we enjoyed creating it.”

Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Trouble, but Make It Art

At its core, Triple Trouble is about tension, between the sacred and the irreverent, the pristine and the vandalised, the controlled and the chaotic. It celebrates not only the individual legacies of three visionaries but also the creative electricity that emerges when their practices collide.

Love the spots! Image Copyright Invader

Each artist brings a form of rebellion: Fairey with his agitprop roots and moral urgency; Hirst with his gleaming conceptual subversions; Invader with his covert mosaics embedded in the DNA of cities worldwide. Together, they stage a vibrant argument about what art can be…and where it belongs.

The Kinder egg surprises return. Image Copyright Invader

This is not an exhibition of polite conversation; it’s a visual jam session where ego meets experimentation, and order meets anarchy. The result is exactly what the title promises: Triple Trouble.

Is this artwork within Hirst’s tank? Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Exhibition Details

Title: Triple Trouble
Dates: Preview Thursday 9th October 6-8 pm. Then 10th October 2025 – 29th March 2026
Location: Newport Street Gallery, Newport Street, London SE11 6AJ
Curator: Connor Hirst
Presented in association with: HENI
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am–6pm
Admission: Free

Image copyright Invader / Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd (photos labelled)

Comments

comments

Share your comments