Superstar UK artist Damien Hirst has announced this week that he will be opening his own art gallery. The gallery will be located in South London and will showcase a selection of his personal art collection, which comprises more than 2000 works, including pieces by Banksy, Koons and other renowned contemporary artists.

“Designed by New Art Gallery Walsall architect Caruso St John for Hirst’s company Science Ltd, the gallery will be housed inside a long terrace of listed buildings, formerly used as theatre carpentry and scenery production workshops, and will be flanked by new buildings.

The ground and upper floors of the listed buildings will be linked to allow the space to be used for both small and large exhibitions and the plans include office rooms for Hirst himself and a restaurant.”

The gallery will be located on Newport St in Vauxhall. (Via HUH/The Observer)

Incase continues to produce Andy Warhol themed collections, featuring the artwork of the iconic pop artist on some of their most popular styles. The Spring 2012 Collection introduces the Marilyn Monroe, Butterflies, Sunset and Skull artworks.

“One of Warhol’s most recognized celebrity portraits is his silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe, an international celebrity that encapsulated the popular culture of her time. Warhol began work on his Marilyn series after her untimely death in 1962, working from a publicity photo for her 1953 film, Niagara. The resulting series perfectly preserved Monroe’s larger than life personality, glamour and charisma, itself becoming as iconic as its subject matter. The selected designs for the Tote, Campus Pack, Protective Sleeve and Snap Case are from the artist’s retrospective series called Marilyn Reversals (late 1970s to early 1980s), in which Warhol reversed the negative of the star’s image and used different color variations in both dark and light hues.

Warhol’s Butterflies (1955) stands out as a precursor to his later artistic perspective and process. While much of his most recognizable artwork was silkscreened, the majority of Warhol’s early works, including Butterflies, were hand drawn. In Butterflies, there is a hint of serial repetition that would eventually become his signature style. The Warhol Snap Case in Butterflies encapsulates the beauty and variation present in nature, two themes that Warhol continually explored in his art.

The 1972 Sunset prints convey the simple elegance of a natural event that occurs every day. The striking series, which consists of 632 unique prints, also showcases Warhol’s brilliance as a colorist. The Sunset print appearing on the Warhol Snap Case captures the moment the sun just begins to disappear below the horizon, using brilliant hues in warm tones to add contrast and enhance the focus.

For his 1976 Skull series, Warhol took photographs of a human skull he purchased while antique shopping. He then transferred the photos into drawings with the use of an overhead projector. In this particular rendering chosen for the Warhol Snap Case, the impact of the stark black and white skull is partially balanced by the playful colors, indicating hope or even humor in spite of the inevitability of death.”

The Incase Andy Warhol Spring 2012 Collection consists of backpacks, tote bags, laptop sleeves and of course also iPad and iPhone cases. You can shop the collection now in the Incase online store.

Tate Modern will soon be welcoming the celebrated Damien Hirst for another exhibition. The retrospective presented showcases several of Hirst’s most fulfilling pieces as an artist. The exhibition will be “a map of his life as an artist, not a greatest hits”. As nostalgia goes for retrospectives, let’s not forget what Hirst had to say about the museum prior. “No way. Museums are for dead artists. I’d never show my work in the Tate. You’d never get me in that place.”

Hit the jump for more photos of the upcoming gallery show.

While in New York for Armory Week, D*Face did his thing and created two large scale murals. The two works, “Love Lost” in Williamsburg and “Lover Her, Hate Him” in SoHo, are both completed and visible now. In case you are not in the area, we present to you these photos that show you what the UK-artist created.

Take a closer look after the jump.

Next month will see the opening of a special Star Wars exhibition entitled Identities. The events will be taking place this spring and fall in Canada and to help promote the event, this series of mosaics depicting key figures from the movie series have been created. We see some fantastic art work with the likenesses of Yoda, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Padme, C-3PO and a Storm Trooper. For more information on Identities, click here.

Check out the mosaics after the jump.

It’s not uncommon for contemporary artists to make a clin d’oeil at already established artwork in history. This “renewal” of artwork is seen through John Mattos’ latest piece featuring C3PO imitating Marcel Duchamps’ Nude Descending a staircase. He’s also taken the liberty of taking on Picasso’s Three Musicians by bringing in Star Wars‘ Cantina as the musicians.

See the list of comparison of classical and contemporary artwork on Tor.

Check out the cover of Banksy’s You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat 240-page book that will be releasing this year. Amazon is accepting pre-orders for the book now and at a discounted price. The book’s list price is $35, but you can reserve it now for $23.10. You can pre-order the book here.

While in New York completing his work on the wall on Bowery and Houston, Retna took some time to get together with the legendary COPE2 on a project in the Bronx. The two did their trademark work, Retna with his calligraphic style and COPE2 with his bubble tags, on a wall in some nice vibrant colors.

Take a further look after the jump.

The Smithsonian Magazine is presenting their 9th annual photo contest and here is a look at some of the finalists. Editors for the contest received a whopping 67,059 photos from contestant all over the world. We do not envy the task of whittling the field down, but we are certainly appreciative of the end result. The editors will select a grand prize winner in addition to winners of categories such as The Natural World, People, Americana, Travel and Altered Images. Smithsonian also invites us all to vote for a people’s choice winner here.

Check out some of the photos as compiled by Boston.com.

CS Editions teamed up with artists Shepard Fairey and Parra to produce some nicely designed notebooks. Instead of going all blank, you can now choose different size notebooks featuring signature graphics by the two artists. The artist series notebooks are expected to launch later this month.