Yesterday I met up with my Art History friends who live around London and we went to the Saatchi gallery in Chelsea. The gallery was opened in 1985 by Charles Saatchi and has occupied many locations in London before opening in its current location in Sloane Square. The art in the gallery is contemporary and often chosen for display because it provokes strong reactions from visitors. The artists who have artwork displayed are relatively unknown, Saatchi scouts new artists and displays their work to help them succeed in the art world. Artists who have had work shown there before they were famous include Jenny Saville and Damien Hirst.
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| Damien Hirst - 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' - 1991 |
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| Jenny Saville - 'Reverse' - 2002 |
The Saatchi gallery is set up to make the prime focus the artwork, unlike more traditional galleries with extensive decorative features, the Saatchi Gallery has big rooms and plain white walls with wooden flooring, forcing your attention to the displays.
The first room in the gallery is filled with photographs taken by Sergei Vasiliev, an artist from Russia. Vasiliev worked as a prison ward and photographed the criminals who had tattooed themselves. These homemade tattoos, inked on the skin with melted book heels, urine and blood, contain coded messages against the Soviet regime. The photographs were taken between 1989 and 1993.
One artist who's work is perhaps the most controversial is Boris Mikhailov. Mikhailov, from the Ukraine, photographed post-Communist poverty in ex-Soviet countries in 1997-8, displaying the harsh conditions of society, called 'Case History'. The photographs are certainly striking, when first entering the room you are confronted with crude images of nude men and women, either with strange deformities or exhibiting their naked bodies, unbothered by their nudity but enjoying it instead. Mikhailov said of his photographs:
“I am not trying to take pictures of sensational things, but rather of those things which are in excess. I am trying to find the unique in that manifold reality itself. Maybe that is exactly what people like, first of all.”
