LONDON
The shock of the new
Charles Saatchi’s Arabic art round-up causes a stir
If there’s one man London looks to for the latest trends in contemporary art, it’s Charles Saatchi. In the 1990s he championed the Young British Artists (YBA) such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, and set up his own gallery in County Hall, on the bank of the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament.
Last year, the Saatchi Gallery moved, to the Duke of York’s HQ building on the King’s Road, in Chelsea; the inaugural exhibition was a celebration of contemporary Chinese art. The gallery claims that more than 400,000 visitors attended the exhibition, a new record for a contemporary art show.
The latest exhibition at the venue is Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East, which runs until 6 May. The show, which features the work of nearly 20 artists from the region, opened to excitable reviews. Joanna Pitman, in The Times, hailed “this rich and revealing exhibition, which thrums with the ideas and the energies of artists from whom we in the West seldom hear”.
Featured artists include French-Algerian Kader Attia, whose aluminium foil installation has attracted much attention, Iranian painter Rokni Haerizadeh, Egyptian Khaled Hafez and Lebanese Marwan Rechmaoui. And, as with the YBA generation, some of their work here has provoked controversy. www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk |
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