Shepard Fairey Space Invader Damien Hirst Landmark London Mural

Like three tenors of street art, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader and Damien Hirst have combined to create a huge new mural in London’s street art heartland, Shoreditch. There are also numerous exciting new artworks put up sans permission.

A torn paper motif simulates layers of ripped paper revealing layer after layer of art pieces by the three art stars.  Shepard Fairey brings this stylistic element from his decades of experience pasting paper on the streets.

Space Invader we know as the world’s preeminent street mosaicist, on this painted wall we see him pixelating a pile of skulls, perhaps a connection with the 14^th century charnel house of Spital Square nearby.

You might ask what is Hirst doing working in the street art context with two of the most revered street artists going, well Hirst can do anything he likes and his flat colour circles on white are iconic early career Hirst.  He has historic connections with Banksy, known to have supported early career Banksy when he first came to London.  Among the mid ‘00s lazy cut and paste honorifics that constantly came up in Banksy articles was “whose art is worth more than £1m! in an era when only one piece had sold for more than £250k, and that one piece was a canvas collaboration with Damien Hirst auctioned by Bono at a celeb auction where the unhinged bidding has all to with ostentatious charity gestures and nothing to do with actual market value.  So Hirst is no stranger to the crème de la crème of street artists.

The Fairey Hirst Invader group show “ Triple Trouble” is opening tonight (Thursday 10^th October 2025) at Hirst’s gallery south of the river.  This has been really obvious to anyone travelling south west out of Waterloo, a journey I last made the day before they started painting this so thanks to Subdude for this image.

This trio have taken advantage of being in Shoreditch to put up a series of new artworks in paste up format. This large paste up has appeared in at least two spots and combines a Shephard Fairey portrait with signature Hirst crushing butterflies on a wheel.  The H is Helch, not Damien!

Invader is known for his mosaics which can be formed from squares as small as a single rubiks cube piece, to bathroom tiles, floor tiles and even larger, what I have never seen before is a street art paste up.  Collaborating with Shepard Fairey who loves his music and whose art is frequently inspired by music iconography, this beautifully placed Invader novelty sadly doesn’t register on the Flash Invader game – boo!!!! :-))

There is another Shepard Fairey update to a spot he has used on at least 3 occasions in the past.  Observant readers will notice that each addition is not placed perfectly over the old one, rather it is perfectly displaced to demonstrate that this image is being repeated, repetition is a keep element of Shepard Fairey’s phenomenology concept.  Really smart readers will recall we previously reviewed Shepard owning this spot in our historic survey of Fairey’s Shoreditch action since 2004.

Thus far not too many new Shepard Fairey stickers spotted but its certain they are out there and they are like the gift that keeps on giving, you keep spotting new Fairey stickers for months after one of his visits.

Triple Trouble

Shephard Fairey Damien Hirst Space Invader

Newport Street Gallery

1 Newport Street, London, SE11 6AJ

all photos Dave Stuart except Subdude where stated