Dezeen Magazine

Damien Hirst designs his second Pharmacy restaurant for Newport Street Gallery

British artist Damien Hirst has created the interiors for his own restaurant inside the Caruso St John-designed Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, London – 13 years after his last restaurant closed (+ slideshow).

Damien Hirst Pharmacy

Hirst's Pharmacy 2 is a continuation of the artist's Notting Hill-based Pharmacy restaurant, which was open from 1998 until 2003.

Similar to its predecessor, which was designed by Barber & Osgerby's interiors company Universal Design Studio, the interior follows a clinical theme inspired by Hirst's 1992 artwork Pharmacy.

Damien Hirst Pharmacy

Images of tablets and brightly coloured pills have been embroidered onto leather banquettes and embedded into the marble floor. Bar stools are topped with pastel-coloured pill-shaped seats.

Walls are covered with a silver-coloured wall chart of pills and pharmaceutical products first produced for the original Pharmacy restaurant.

Damien Hirst Pharmacy

Each section of the wallpaper features a pharmaceutical image, along with a title and a reference to a Biblical passage.

A neon prescriptions sign hangs above the bar, along with a series of sculptures based on molecular structures.

Damien Hirst Pharmacy

Windows are covered with dark-coloured translucent vinyls. Stark lighting is used to reaffirm the restaurant's pharmaceutical theme.

A number of Hirst's site-specific works will also be exhibited throughout the restaurant, including the artist's Medicine Cabinets from 2010 and butterfly Kaleidoscope paintings.

Pharmacy 2 occupies a space on the first floor of Hirst's Newport Street Gallery, which was completed by London architecture studio Caruso St John in 2015.

Damien Hirst Pharmacy

The restaurant is a collaboration between Hirst and chef Mark Hix, for whom Hirst has designed a number of restaurant installations, and is set to open on 23 February.

"Pharmacy 2 combines two of my greatest passions; art and food," said Hirst.

Photography is by Prudence Cuming Associates, courtesy of 2H Restaurant Ltd.