The Newport Street Gallery has unveiled its latest show ‘Dominion’, an exhibition cultivated from Damien Hirst’s private collection, with pieces by artists spanning the likes of Tracey Emin to Francis Bacon. Curated by Connor Hirst, the show takes place throughout the whole gallery, boasting some eighty pieces on display. FAD magazine stopped by on opening night, surveyed the scene, and wandered the myriad of exquisite and rarely exhibited works.
Since its inaugural show in 2015, Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery has been no stranger to elaborate and spectacular art, and this latest collection is no different. Picking through the crowds, adorned uniformly with flutes of fizz, excited chatter, and the vaguest wisps of tobacco from a smoking area awash with the same buzz as the gallery entranceway, guests will be treated to a barrage of uncanny pop sensibility that delights in the grandeur of the Newport space.
Hirst’s contemporaries pepper the scene, from Marcus Harvey’s ‘Myra’ which ominously eyeballs viewers at entry, to Gavin Turk’s ‘Transit Disaster Green’ and one of Sarah Lucas’ ‘Bunny’ sculptures alongside its adjacent photograph, to a touching and lauded work of neon scripture by Tracey Emin, whose words hang over the final exit: ‘My Heart is with You and I Love You Always Always Always’. Each of the YBA pieces, prized and displayed proudly, pay a generous homage to the scene in which Hirst found his feet, and a generation of artists who believed that boundaries were there to be pushed against.
Likewise, it would be remiss to visit Hirst’s collection without taking the time to properly explore one of its brightest stars: Francis Bacon’s ‘Fury’ which stands proudly beside the last of the pieces in the show. Both a capstone to the exhibition at large, and a champion of art’s power to shock, ‘Fury’ is wrought with a psychological torsion that stops viewers in their tracks. Endemically violent, surreal, and longing, this classic of Bacon’s oeuvre simply demands that guests stop and stare; no doubt drawing an audience from across the breadth of London, all eager to peer into its depths.
Naturally, guests can expect to feel a degree of disquietude amongst the images on display, even those that have become embedded in collective consciousness. Between one of Warhol’s 1971 ‘Electric Chair’ prints and Banksy’s ‘Can’t Beat the Feeling’, there are certainly some familiar faces on show, but the exhibition’s power lies precisely in this fact. The works have lost none of their power over time. Shocking, enthralling, and vibrantly macabre by turns, ‘Dominion’ revels in its enduring ability to provoke a response in its audience. The buzz at the entrance, and the silence that permeates the gallery floor, both speak volumes.
DOMINION, 24th May – 1st September 2024
Newport Street Gallery
