Forty years after it first opened its doors, Saatchi Gallery remains one of those rare institutions where art doesn’t merely decorate walls but expands the way we perceive the world. Since 1985, the gallery has been both a catalyst and a compass for contemporary culture – a place where risk, experimentation and imagination collide. Founded on the belief that art should reflect its own time, Saatchi offered a platform for untested ideas and unfiltered emotion, creating a space in which the new could be truly seen. In the decades since, it has launched careers, sparked controversy, and defined an era. The Long Now, opening in November 2025, marks this legacy not through nostalgia, but through renewal: a meditation on endurance, perception and what it means to live, and make, in the pre…
Forty years after it first opened its doors, Saatchi Gallery remains one of those rare institutions where art doesn’t merely decorate walls but expands the way we perceive the world. Since 1985, the gallery has been both a catalyst and a compass for contemporary culture – a place where risk, experimentation and imagination collide. Founded on the belief that art should reflect its own time, Saatchi offered a platform for untested ideas and unfiltered emotion, creating a space in which the new could be truly seen. In the decades since, it has launched careers, sparked controversy, and defined an era. The Long Now, opening in November 2025, marks this legacy not through nostalgia, but through renewal: a meditation on endurance, perception and what it means to live, and make, in the present tense.
Over its four-decade history, Saatchi Gallery has continuously reshaped the cultural landscape. The 1987 exhibition introducing the Young British Artists brought a jolt of raw energy to British art, announcing figures such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. A decade later, Sensation (1997) ignited national debate, challenging conventions of morality and taste. In the 2000s, The Triumph of Painting (2005) reaffirmed the vitality of painterly practice in an age of digital media, while The Revolution Continues: New Art from China (2008) opened Western eyes to a wave of global perspectives. Most recently, Sweet Harmony: Rave Today (2019) captured the crosscurrents of music, youth and technology in contemporary culture. Together, these shows formed not just an institutional history but a map of cultural consciousness — the evolving vocabulary through which Saatchi has continued to question what contemporary art can be.
The Long Now extends this lineage while asking how art might sustain meaning in an era of impermanence. Curated by Philippa Adams, the exhibition unfolds across nine rooms and two floors, weaving past and future into a single, resonant continuum. At its heart is Richard Wilson’s 20:50, a work that has become emblematic of the gallery’s history. Filling a chamber with recycled engine oil, Wilson transforms reflection into illusion, architecture into echo. Shown here for the first time on the top floor, 20:50 becomes both elegy and mirror: a meditation on fragility, the climate crisis, and the uneasy beauty of human invention. Its surface – still, black, infinite – reflects not just the room but the world’s precarious balance.
Painting, too, remains a vital force within the exhibition, a medium through which Saatchi Gallery continues to articulate its deepest commitments. Jenny Saville’s Passage (2004) dominates its space with monumental grace, her flesh-toned palette and vigorous brushwork embodying her self-declared aim “to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies.” Alongside her, works by Alex Katz, Martine Poppe, and Jo Dennis speak to painting’s resilience – its ability to absorb technology, photography, and abstraction while retaining its tactile intimacy. These artists, diverse in style yet united in spirit, embody the gallery’s faith in the physical mark as a conduit of emotion, intellect and presence in an increasingly dematerialised world.
Material process threads through the show as a recurring motif. Alice Anderson’s copper-wrapped sculptures shimmer like captured data streams, each thread a record of gesture and time. Rannva Kunoy’s luminous canvases evoke cosmic motion, where paint seems to vibrate between substance and light. Carolina Mazzolari merges textile, pigment, and sound into immersive installations that border on ritual. These artists extend the notion of mark-making beyond the canvas – gestures that are both deeply human and expansively technological, evoking the pulse of creation itself.
Elsewhere, the exhibition becomes participatory, inviting the viewer into the work’s physical and conceptual architecture. Allan Kaprow’s YARD – a field of scattered car tyres – encourages movement, play, and improvisation, transforming spectatorship into encounter. Overhead, Conrad Shawcross’s Golden Lotus (Inverted) suspends a vintage Lotus car, its mechanised geometry translating engineering into poetry. Together they form a dialogue between gravity and grace, a choreography of control and surrender. These installations epitomise Saatchi’s curatorial ethos: art as an experience, a conversation and a catalyst.
Technology and its discontents form another narrative within The Long Now. Artists such as Chino Moya and Mat Collishaw examine surveillance, automation and artificial intelligence, articulating a future both seductive and unsettling. Their works shimmer with digital light yet hum with anxiety, reflecting a world caught between progress and loss. In contrast, Gavin Turk’s Bardo, composed of fractured glass panels, offers a quiet counterpoint — a fragile meditation on decay and rebirth. It mirrors our fractured relationship with the environment, echoing broader concerns explored through Edward Burtynsky’s aerial landscapes, Ibrahim Mahama’s reassembled materials and Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s ecological interventions. Each artist engages with the debris of modernity, finding in it both warning and beauty.
Light, both literal and metaphorical, becomes a unifying force. Olafur Eliasson, Chris Levine and Frankie Boyle use illumination as a language of contemplation, turning perception itself into subject matter. Their works transform rooms into environments of stillness, where light behaves like breath. In these spaces, time seems to dilate; the viewer becomes aware not of seconds passing, but of being present. Such moments crystallise the spirit of The Long Now – an invitation to slow down, to observe, to inhabit duration rather than consume it. Beyond its visual power, the exhibition underscores Saatchi Gallery’s renewed purpose as a charitable institution. Since gaining charitable status in 2019, the gallery has sought to democratise access to art, reinvesting ticket revenue into education and outreach. School groups, community workshops and public engagement programmes now form an integral part of its mission. This social dimension reinforces the idea that art’s value lies not only in its aesthetic impact but in its capacity to foster empathy, curiosity and connection.
As the exhibition unfolds, it feels less like a retrospective and more like a living continuum — an essay written across decades in paint, light and sound. Philippa Adams describes The Long Now as “both a celebration and a provocation,” and that duality lies at the heart of Saatchi’s legacy. Director Paul Foster echoes this vision, positioning the anniversary as a renewal of the gallery’s pledge to keep contemporary art relevant, responsive and accessible. The collaboration with De Beers London, whose commitment to craftsmanship and ethical practice mirrors the gallery’s creative values, further highlights the intersection of art, industry, and sustainability that defines the current cultural moment. Downstairs, the Bagri Foundation’s companion exhibition, Myths, Dreams and New Realities, introduces thirteen emerging Asian artists whose works reimagine cultural identity through personal mythologies and speculative futures. The dialogue between the two shows expands the horizon of The Long Now, linking local reflection to global conversation. Together, they position Saatchi Gallery as a site not of closure but of continuous exchange – where history informs innovation and diversity defines progress.
Ultimately, The Long Now resists finality. It is less an anniversary exhibition than an act of resolve – a reminder that art’s true power lies in its capacity to stretch time, to hold the present open. To wander through its rooms is to encounter echoes of the past and whispers of what lies ahead, to sense the rhythm of a gallery that has never ceased to evolve. Saatchi’s achievement over four decades has been not merely to exhibit contemporary art, but to nurture the very conditions in which it can thrive. In doing so, it has shaped how a generation sees itself and, crucially, how the next might imagine its future.
The Long Now: Saatchi Gallery at 40 is at Saatchi Gallery, London, from 5 November – 1 March.
Words: Shirley Stevenson
Image Credits: 1. Richard Wilson, 20:50. Courtesy of the artist and Saatchi Gallery. Installation view at Saatchi Gallery, 1991. 2. Tom Hunter, The Way Home, 2000. Courtesy of the artist. 3. Edward Burtynsky, Ravensworth Coal Tailing 1, Ravensworth Mine, Hunter Valley New South Wales, Australia, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Flowers Gallery, London. 4. Conrad Shawcross, Golden Lotus (Inverted). Installation view at Warehouse Project Manchester, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. 5. Allan Kaprow, YARD, 1961. Courtesy of Fondazione Morra, Naples. 6. Richard Wilson, 20:50. Courtesy of the artist and Saatchi Gallery. Installation view at Saatchi Gallery, 2010.
Posted on 6 November 2025