‘Fun’ is a quality which seems to be all too frequently forgotten by curatorial teams. But it certainly takes pride of place at the Saatchi Gallery’s The Long Now, an expansive, nine- room retrospective which aims to both celebrate its past and reiterate its commitment to championing innovation in the present and future.
The show is curated by Philippa Adams, who previously served as the gallery’s Senior Director for over 20 years, and is divided into spaces dedicated to key themes which have underpinned its exhibitions over the last four decades. Abstraction, landscapes, AI and technology, and climate change are all given their own rooms. They’re populated with works, old and new, by artists with whom the gallery shares a long-running history, as well as commissions from emerging artists.A reinvention of the wheel, conceptually speaking, it may not be, but it’s a bona fide feast for the eyes.
Across two floors, each room has been curated and installed with care to ensure every piece in the room can shine - no space feels overstuffed. Adams has clearly given careful consideration to how the works will complement each other, both in terms of colour and scale, which enhances the viewing experience and makes you want to linger in every room. It’s a rarity that you find yourself at an exhibition where you genuinely don’t know where to look. However, starting from the very first room, dedicated to mark making and boasting Rannva Kunoy’s marvellous, luminescent, scratch-art-esque works alongside a large-scale Alice Anderson painting, it is consistently a challenge to settle on a favourite piece.
Other highlights from a leisurely mosey through The Long Now include Jenny Saville’s Passage, a monumental painting of a nude trans woman. Painted in 2004, the image is deeply emotive and a fine testament to Saville’s reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting painters. On the total other end of the spectrum, Chris Levine’s Light is Love uses projections visible only in your peripheral vision, which leave you delightfully discombobulated. Elsewhere, former Stone Roses’ guitarist John Squire’s digitally fragmented portrait of Twiggy is wonderfully eye-catching, as is his pal Damien Hirst’s futuristic landscape of a city, obscured by ice cream-like dollops of paint. Arguably no Saatchi retrospective would be complete without some Hirst; it is the home of the YBA’s infamous formaldehyde shark after all.
It’s a brilliant showcase of the gallery’s decades-long passion for contemporary art
It’s not just your eyes which are engaged here, as this is a show that could, for once, meaningfully be described as a ‘multisensory experience’, thanks to the inclusion of two thrilling installations plucked from the gallery’s history books. The first is Conrad Shawcross’s Golden Lotus (Inverted), a gold car suspended from the ceiling and rotating. In what is a nod to rave culture, a hypnotic original soundtrack by Scottish DJ Mylo (of ‘Drop The Pressure’ fame) blares as the car spins, meaning you can hear the piece from other rooms, long before you see it. The fun dial is turned up even further by Allan Kaprow’s YARD installation, made up piles of car tyres, located directly beneath Shawcross’s automobile with an invitation to viewers to climb through and interact with the tyres as they wish; acting as a quasi-soft play area for easily distracted art lovers.
Similarly to how Mylo’s pulsating beats alert you that something big is around the corner, later in the show you’ll find your nose twitching towards the distinct smell of oil which wafts through the latter gallery spaces before you eventually arrive at the final room. Here, at the show’s summit on the gallery’s top floor, you’ll find Richard Wilson’s iconic 20:50 installation, exhibited for the fourth time in the Saatchi Gallery’s history, having first been shown in 1987. Simplistic in many ways, the installation sees the room filled with thick black engine oil, creating a mirror-like optical illusion that is breathtaking and mesmerising in equal measures.
The Long Now is a brilliant showcase of the gallery’s decades-long passion for contemporary art, and knack of making stars out of artists whose work is as thought-provoking as it is visually arresting. One of the most expertly curated and deeply satisfying displays of contemporary art in London in recent memory.
