Damien Hirst opens Newport Street Gallery

Artist, curator, prolific collector, and Goldsmiths alumnus Damien Hirst this week opens the Newport Street Gallery in south London - the realisation of his long-term ambition to share his collection of some 3,000 works of art with the public.

Exhibitions at Newport Street will vary between single artist and group shows and entry to the galleries will be free.

Just a short walk from Tate Britain, Newport Street has been under construction for over three years. The inaugural show, opening on Thursday 8 October, will be ‘Power Stations’, a solo exhibition of paintings by John Hoyland (1934–2011) - one of the greatest British abstract painters of his generation.

Hirst’s gallery in Lambeth is expected to showcase work by many of his contemporaries at Goldsmiths, including Sarah Lucas (BA Fine Art 1987) and Mat Collishaw (BA Fine Art 1989), alongside works by artists as varied as Tracey Emin, Picasso, and Francis Bacon, Hirst’s natural history collection, taxidermy and historical artefacts.

“Art should be experienced by as many people as possible”

Hirst comments: “I believe art should be experienced by as many people as possible and I’ve felt guilty owning work that is stored away in boxes where no one can see it, so having a space where I can put on shows from the collection is a dream come true. 

“Sometimes I still can’t believe that I’m lucky enough to actually own work by some of the artists who first inspired me and made me want to become an artist – like Picasso or Francis Bacon – but my favourite works by far are those by my contemporaries, and I definitely feel a responsibility to share them as much as I can. 

“Newport Street is an incredible space with an amazing sense of history, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for me to wear a curatorial hat for a change, I couldn’t be happier.”

Designed by architects Caruso St John, Newport Street Gallery spans 37,000 square feet. Its construction has involved the conversion of three listed Victorian buildings, which were purpose-built in 1913 to serve as scenery painting studios for the booming local and West End theatre industries.

“Being in art school empowers you to do your own thing”

Damien Hirst – arguably Britain’s most successful artist - studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s, conceiving and curating the art exhibition Freeze, which became the launching point for a generation of young British artists (YBAs).

In conversation with our Head of the Department of Art Richard Noble in 2013, Hirst recalled his Goldsmiths memories: “They were great times. On my first day I met Angus Fairhurst, Mat Collishaw, Simon Pattison – all in my year. Gary Hume was there too, and Sarah Lucas was in the year above me.

“I remember Sarah was the link to everything because she was going out with Grenville Davey. So he was coming into the bar, this artist that had been at the College and who had recently got famous. And then you’d bump into Julian Opie and Lisa Milroy. You thought: ‘Oh my God, it’s a real connection to the art world’.”

“Being in art school empowers you to do your own thing. When I left my Foundation course I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then as soon as I arrived at Goldsmiths I knew it was where I needed to be. It was absolutely the right place; there was nowhere else I could have gone where I could have done what I wanted to do.”