The Saatchi Gallery will celebrate its 40 year anniversary with a special exhibition that brings together both old and new works of art.
The renowned gallery in Chelsea champions contemporary art and brought back curator Philippa Adams, who was their senior director from 1999 until 2020, to work on the exhibition.
The show, titled The Long Now, launches next week on 5 November and runs until 1 March 2026.
Adams, 52, was pleased to return and curate the exhibition, she said: “It’s been thrilling — I’ve really enjoyed it.
“It’s been really exciting opening up so many conversations with artists and gallerists and the team here have been amazing.
“I’ve been really happy to be back in the room.”
In celebration of the anniversary, Adams was keen to bring back memorable pieces from the last few decades, as well as spotlighting new voices to remain in line with the gallery’s position of giving emerging artists a platform.
One of the main historic installations Adams sought to bring back was 20:50 by Richard Wilson, a defining piece of contemporary art that comments on the climate crisis.
Originally shown in 1987, in the basement of the gallery’s original location on Boundary Road, Wilson’s installation fills the room to waist height with recycled engine oil, reflecting the space around it.
Now, in Duke of York square, the gallery’s home since 2008, the installation is being shown in the Upper Gallery to give it a whole new quality.
Adams said: “It is very relevant today, almost in a different way as it was when it was the most important minimalist artwork to date.”
Jo Dennis, a fellow artist who is showing at the Saatchi Gallery for the first time, had a full circle moment when she realised Wilson’s 20:50 would be in this exhibition, as she originally saw the installation when she first moved to London to study Fine Art 25 years ago.
Dennis, 52, said: “It’s amazing to show alongside artists that you’ve admired and learnt from over the years but also historic works that sort of grounded my own practice.”
“I didn’t realise what art could be outside of paintings on a wall,” she added.
Dennis is a full-time artist who explores the idea of ‘found objects’ in her work — transforming discarded items and surfaces with paint.
She will present three pieces at this exhibition, the first of which is a sculpture that she made two years ago, but has never shown publicly before.
The sculpture is three and a half metres tall and made from surplus military tent fabric that she painted on and then arranged around a steel structure.
The other two pieces were paintings made specifically for this exhibition, where she also used tent fabric as its base and included sewn elements like zips, fastenings, and toggles.
Dennis said: “It’s all about the aesthetics of entropy really.
“Things falling apart and showing time passing as a kind of metaphor for human existence I suppose, or our own mortality, which ties really nicely into the idea of The Long Now.”
The exhibition’s title is intended to challenge today’s throwaway culture, and Adams said they wanted to bring a gentle, ‘conscientious’ approach to this sense of today, giving visitors the opportunity to slow down.
The exhibition arrives just as King’s College London released a study this week that shows how viewing original works of art in galleries can relieve stress.
This considered approach to the exhibition can also be seen in the political commentary that many of the pieces touch on, including the environment, technology, and LGBTQ+ issues.
One of these notable pieces is the returning portrait Passage (2004) by Jenny Saville — a striking painting that shows a body between genders.
Inspired by this, Adams plans to have a panel discussion of LGBTQ+ issues at one of the gallery’s ‘Lates’ events, where the exhibition is open into the evening on select dates each month.
Adams said: “I think art has always been an arm to help steer conversation and open up discussion with community and hold space politically, but it does so in a powerful but more gentle way.
“It holds a wider space that it can’t be ignored and that brings to a level the bigger conversations that have to be held where you can make differences.”
Feature Image credit: Saatchi Gallery – Conrad Shawcross, Golden Lotus (Inverted).
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