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Review Oct 07 2008 « | »
The Revolution Continues The re-opening of the Saatchi Gallery.

Donald Eastwood

This week sees the (re)opening of the Saatchi Gallery in its latest and best venue at the Duke of York's HQ on the King's Road. At 70000sq ft of exhibition space, bounded by clean walls and idiosyncratic architecture, its just slightly smaller than the Tate Modern, and, thanks to sponsorship and proposed event hire, equally free to enter. By all accounts it is a brilliant space, and its existence is good news for all involved in art, but especially emerging artists, who have been most regularly touched by the Saatchi effect.

The launch show, entitled The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art, has received scant (or more likely select) publicity so far, sure to change after today's preview, but Waldemar Januszczak provides a good overview of the importance of the gallery and show review here, while Richard Dorment moves from re-hashing the above piece to more original comment at the end of his article. Refer to the show catalogue while you read here.

The political influence is clear in the show: smiling Mao's abound like a communist pop equivalent to Mickey Mouse, and state controlled repression and ensuing human commodification are equally prevalent themes. The timing is unfortunate; after the spate of press exposure around the Olympics, these ideas seem quite worn and pre-expressed, even although the pieces far predate this year, and this goes some way to explaining the lack of critical excitement such pieces produced. On the other hand the pieces looking from China outwards - such as Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's well-publicised geriatric leaders in wheelchairs - seem so much more exciting.

The charge of eastern re-hashing of western concepts seems to have some grounding, and Dorment puts forward the slightly weak argument that Chinese culture values the passing down of tradition over novelty. It reminded me of a conversation we had in India with a member of a promotional body for Asian Arts. When we asserted that the boom in the Indian art market must have been a great thing for new emerging artists there, he replied that it had not, because increased values really translated to the secondary market of dealers and collectors, and value increases would rise in a bubble containing them and the few pre-established artists they deal in. As such 'new' art would really be art convenient to this bubble, and emerging artists with truly new work would hear about the boom but frustratingly never feel it.

It was Chinese buyers, and not Saatchi, who sparked this market emergence, and potentially their rather safe and west-aware taste that dictated it. Perhaps this is why some, though certainly not all, of the concepts behind these big auction players already seem played out.

Perhaps over-anticipation is at fault too - we will see at the launch tonight. One thing is sure, whether The Revolution Continues is 'new' or not, Saatchi's will surely use this beautiful space to continue to promote true emergence in the future, as he has elsewhere in the past.

The Saatchi Gallery is open daily from 10am-6pm, The Revolution Continues shows from this Thursday, 9th October, until 10th January.

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