Saatchi Gallery, London

It was a free day and I decided to take a walk to Saatchi Gallery. It is a contemporary art gallery that sits at the Duke of York’s Headquarters in south-west London.

Opened in 1985 by wealthy British businessman, co-founder of the world’s largest advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, or perhaps more notoriously, the ex-husband of British author, cook and TV presenter Nigella Lawson – Charles Saatchi isn’t a figure that spotlights, cameras and tabloids would ignore.

The gallery was first opened to show his private minimalism collection from the States to the public. Now, Saatchi Gallery becomes a tremendously propitious platform for young artists to showcase their work. Think Damien Hirst, Cecily Brown and Tracy Emin. I know very little of contemporary art, but these names do ring up a sonorous artsy-fartsy bell. “The gallery’s aim is to make art more accessible to the mainstream, rather than an exclusive artworld pursuit.” And I couldn’t like that more.

What’s on now is Pangaea II: New Art from Africa and Latin Africa, which as a whole, was a psychedelic and extremely evocative assemblage of art to me. On one end there were drawings pierced with emotions, done so politically wrong to be politically right, on the other end there were psychotropic geometric compositions that stirred up images of playground and childhood memories.

There were the realists and the naturalists, strong messages, black humour and a vast arrangement of incomprehensible, yet often easily misunderstood objects. The yellow and overly decorative footwear is my favourite shoes crafted by a kindergarten kid. The other is a levitating tree and then a small space crowded by giant crawling ants.The highlight of the day for me was the expansive blue wasteland made up of almost 100,000 plastic bags.

And there it was, a disconcerting me, drown out by the loud colourful voices that did their best to be audible to the heedless reality, you and me. 

With love x