{"id":294408,"date":"2025-10-11T10:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T10:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/294408\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T10:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T10:26:10","slug":"triple-trouble-fairey-hirst-invader-review-the-most-revolting-visual-soup-imaginable-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/294408\/","title":{"rendered":"Triple Trouble: Fairey, Hirst, Invader review \u2013 the most revolting visual soup imaginable | Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve heard of the best of both worlds, well get ready for the worst of three. Down in Vauxhall in London, three artists have mashed themselves together to create the most revolting visual soup imaginable, an exhibition that isn\u2019t so much the sum of its parts as a total negation of anything good any of them has ever done.<\/p>\n

Whatever qualities YBA kingpin Damien Hirst and street artists Shepard Fairey<\/a> and Invader might have, none of them are on display in this staggeringly vast exhibition \u2013 it just goes on and on, huge room after huge room filled with aesthetic crap.<\/p>\n

Triple Trouble \u2026 collaborative works by Shepard Fairey, Damien Hirst, and Invader. Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd\/Artworks \u00a9 the artists<\/p>\n

The show is made up largely of collaborations between the artists, Hirst\u2019s dots and medical cabinets smashed brutally and heinously together with Invader\u2019s little ceramic aliens and Fairey\u2019s leaden posterised Photoshoppery.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a wall of Fairey\u2019s Obey logo plastered over Hirst spin and flower paintings, adding nothing to something that wasn\u2019t good to start with.<\/p>\n

My jaw dropped when I saw the huge Hirst formaldehyde case with an invader alien drowning in the blue fluid \u2013 it was like walking in on a crime scene. Why would you go to such lengths to create something that no one comes out of well, that expresses both artists\u2019 ideas so poorly?<\/p>\n

Alien in formaldehyde \u2026 \u2018my jaw dropped\u2019. Photograph: Justin Tallis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

And somehow, <\/strong>it only gets worse. A medical cabinet filled with Obey-logo pills, diamant\u00e9-encrusted Space Invaders, grim butterfly paintings with some ludicrous Fairey propaganda woman staring out at you, countless 8-bit pixelated portraits of Lou Reed and Sid Vicious. It\u2019s as if someone let the most annoying teenager you\u2019ve ever met make some art. At one point there\u2019s an enormous triple portrait featuring what might be Malala Yousafzai and Miley Cyrus plastered with scalpel blades. It\u2019s all juvenile, dumb, silly imagery that does not work on any level.<\/p>\n

Would this have been better as solo presentations of each artist\u2019s work? Maybe. But Invader\u2019s work is built for the street, not the gallery, that\u2019s where it\u2019s meant to be, where it works best. And Fairey\u2019s work is built for the bin. Getting up close and personal with it just rams home how ugly, one-dimensional, faux-political and stupid it is. <\/strong><\/p>\n

No power \u2026 Shepard Fairey during an exhibition photo call at Newport Street Gallery. Photograph: Justin Tallis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all precision-engineered to sell, in vast quantities at vast prices, to people with the worst taste on Earth. And the reason this is so spectacularly naff is that Hirst is important, he\u2019s made vital, powerful art. Regardless of whether or not you like any of these artists, all three have something that they\u2019re good at, but no one bothered to put any of that in this show (curated by Hirst\u2019s son Connor). Take Invader off the street, or Fairey off the front of sweatshirts, and you strip them <\/strong>of their power. Take the ideas out of Hirst, and you strip him of his purpose.<\/p>\n

Everyone here was so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn\u2019t stop to think if they should. And they <\/strong>shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve heard of the best of both worlds, well get ready for the worst of three. Down in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":294409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-294408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115355057737323968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}