Mick Hartley

This morning I thought I'd head down to the new Saatchi Gallery by Sloane Square, to check out Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East.

First, though, Jerry Springer:

 

Well I don't know. If Jerry Springer and assorted lovelies are going to stand by the side of my route posing, it would be churlish not to take their picture. Beyond that I can't say and didn't ask. Maybe he's about to fulfil a life-long ambition and don the tights as Roxie Hart.

Further distractions down by the Palace. Crowds out in force and the mood expectant:

 

 

Was Her Maj about to make an appearance?

The Guards - Coldstream, Welsh, Horse, whichever, I've no idea how you tell -  were putting in the appropriate background oompahs:

 

Ah, here we are:

 

Back from the weekly trip to the shops, perhaps, the coaches full of overflowing Tesco bags.

Anyway, yes, the Saatchi Gallery….

My first time here. Impressive…

 

And, really, I have nothing but praise. Free admission, with an exhibition guide at £1.50 so no peering down by every picture to read the caption: no ropes or barriers: no problem with photography: and beautiful light airy galleries.

 

 

You can bring the kids along:

  

Even if they're not very interested in the art…

 

 

It's the kind of place where you've already got a smile on your face before you start with what's on display. 

The exhibition itself? Wonderful. Well, I thought so. I did take some pictures of individual works, but you really need to go and see them in situ. You can check them out on the website. Kader Attia and Shadi Ghadirian are probably the ones you'll have seen if you've read about the exhibition at all. That may be, I suppose, because they're the ones that deal most obviously with our preconceptions about the Middle East. Preconceptions? Well yes, it's ironic, really: practically every show you go to by contemporary artists nowadays claims to be smashing our prejudices, subverting our preconceptions, and here's one which, without shouting about it, actually does manage in a way to do that by simply showing artists at work in societies which we normally only know through news reports. Check out for instance the humanism of Iranian Ahmad Morshedloo, or Iraqi Ahmed Alsoudani with his Baghdad pictures: "One way to read this is that under Saddam’s dictatorship art was constricted and imprisoned and this idea of censorship is continually evoked through a layered approach in this work."

A couple of pieces not in the Unveiled exhibition: Will Ryman's The Bed:

 

Eat your heart out, Tracey Emin. And the wonderful Old Persons Home, by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, with dynamo-electric wheelchairs moving the life-size oldies randomly around the room:

 

So…I have a new favourite London gallery. With Nigella waiting at home with something luscious, Charles Saatchi is clearly doing something right.