Choose Art: Trainspotting Is Back in Cinemas and Atom Gallery Already Saw It Coming

Photo credits: Sony Pictures Classics

The TRAINSPOTTERS #T30 exhibition brought 30+ artists to Stoke Newington for the film's 30th birthday. The show's over. The prints are still here.

Trainspotting is back in UK cinemas right now — a 4K restoration, supervised by Danny Boyle, thirty years on from a film that somehow managed to be brutal and funny and deeply Scottish all at once. People are going to see it again for the first time, and people who've never seen it are finally going to understand what everyone's been going on about.

Atom Gallery in Stoke Newington didn't wait for the rerelease. Back in February, they put on TRAINSPOTTERS #T30: a group exhibition of 30+ artists making entirely new work in response to the film's legacy. Not a nostalgia trip. New work. There's a difference — and it's one worth understanding.

The show, and why it wasn't what you'd expect

TRAINSPOTTERS #T30 was curated by two people who have more right than almost anyone to do this. Blam — the artist and designer who goes by Grow Up, who created the original Trainspotting film poster — and Lorenzo Agius, the photographer who shot it. Between them, they essentially handed Trainspotting to the world in 1996. Thirty years later, they put together a show that asked what comes next rather than what came before.

The exhibition ran from 21 February to 14 March 2026 at Atom Gallery, 127 Green Lanes, London N16 9DA. Over 30 artists contributed entirely new pieces riffing on the film's countercultural energy — its politics, its chaos, its particular flavour of Scottish grimness and dark humour. A percentage from all sales went to Big Issue, which felt exactly right.

The list of names involved is the kind that makes you wish you'd gone to the private view. Stanley Donwood. Modern Toss. Magda Archer. Adam and Joe. That's not a nostalgia crowd — that's people who still have things to say.

The prints that came out of it

Some of what was made for TRAINSPOTTERS is still available in the Atom shop, and it's worth knowing about before the rerelease buzz fades.

Lizzie Coles produced portrait prints of Renton and Sickboy — two of the film's central characters — rendered in her characteristic illustration-adjacent style. Both are limited edition giclee prints, priced at £60 each. They're the kind of thing you'd regret not picking up, especially as the film gets a whole new wave of attention.

At the other end of the scale, Stanley Donwood contributed "OK Computer: Tango" — a 70x70cm screenprint in a limited edition of 333, at £333. Donwood is the artist behind most of Radiohead's visual identity, and this piece was made specifically for the TRAINSPOTTERS show. It's not cheap, but it's a Donwood original print made for a specific cultural moment. Whether that matters to you depends on how you think about what prints are for.

Modern Toss — the anarchic British art and design duo — contributed "Periodic Table of Swearing – The Scottish Field Report", a two-colour silkscreen, 70x50cm. If you know Modern Toss's work, you know exactly what to expect. If you don't: imagine the Periodic Table of Elements reworked as an inventory of Scottish profanity, treated as a legitimate cultural document. It is.

Why the timing still matters

The exhibition closed in March, but the conversation around Trainspotting is only getting louder. The 4K restoration is currently screening at UK cinemas including Vue, ODEON, and Picturehouse. That means right now, people are watching or rewatching the film, arguing about whether it holds up (it does), and looking for ways to connect with it beyond the multiplex.

A limited edition print from an exhibition that brought together 30+ contemporary artists specifically for this anniversary is not a bad answer to that question. It's the difference between buying a cinema programme and owning something that was made.

For anyone who's been thinking about getting into buying prints — or finally putting something proper on the wall — this is the kind of entry point that tends to make sense in retrospect.

The TRAINSPOTTERS prints are available in the Atom Gallery shop now — check availability before they're gone. If you're not ready to commit to a specific piece, the Under £100 section is a reliable place to start collecting without taking a financial risk. Most of the work there has no business being that accessible. Which is exactly the point.

Browse the full shop at atomgallery.co.uk/shop, or visit in person Thursday–Friday 11–5pm, Saturday 11–6pm at 127 Green Lanes, London N16 9DA.