Wednesday, 16 May 2001
Charles Saatchi, the multimillionaire art collector and benefactor who has become Britain's leading patron of young talent, is to provide a new venue for cutting-edge works.
Charles Saatchi, the multimillionaire art collector and benefactor who has become Britain's leading patron of young talent, is to provide a new venue for cutting-edge works.
The advertising executive whose gallery in north London has helped to launch the careers of many modern artists is to open a second exhibition space to promote the students he has been supporting through college.
The new venue in Shore-ditch, east London, will be close to the premises of the influential dealers Jay Jopling and Victoria Miro, who both recently set up shop in the area.
Charlotte Mullins, the editor of Art Review magazine, which is to give details of the move next week, said: "It's almost like an authoritative stamp on the area, but it's also as if he feels he had better get in on the act. The fact that this is near Jay Jopling and Victoria Miro has not been lost on anybody.
"But picking up artists has always been his thing and he's been doing it earlier and earlier. Showing artists this way is just a bit more funky, a bit more hip."
Mr Saatchi founded bursaries for students at a number of London art colleges two years ago, including Goldsmiths', the Alma Mater of Damien Hirst, and the Royal College, which boasts Tracey Emin as an old girl, with proceeds from the £1.6m sale of works from his collection.
The students were eager to exhibit, and Mr Saatchi seized an opportunity to take over an existing space, the Underwood Street Gallery in Shoreditch, to show their work. The exhibition is expected to open on 5 June.
The move has proved a lifeline for a young dealer, Simon Hedges, who had been running the gallery until it was threatened with being sold last year.
The gallery is in a building leased from a charity. With developers taking over many of the poorer parts of London inhabited by artists, the charity looked likely to put its interests first and sell. A deal that would have seen the end of the gallery fell through at the last minute last year. But it left Mr Hedges without a settled programme of exhibitions and he decided to approach Charles Saatchi.
"He has always lent us great support," Mr Hedges told the Art Review. "He has come to all the shows, he's brought interesting people down and he's bought work from us."
Talks are still in progress about how the arrangement will work. The first exhibition was due to open next week but has been delayed to June. After the showcase of college students, it is thought that the gallery will offer space for artists in the Saatchi collection to exhibit new work.
Ms Mullins said: "The Underwood Street Gallery has always had a good reputation. This is a benevolent move, but you wonder whether he would have done it if the gallery had been in W12."
Charles Saatchi has long been a controversial figure in the contemporary art market, but his eye for spotting new talent has made him the envy of rivals. He has championed the careers of artists including the group known as the Young British Artists, headed by Damien Hirst, and highlights of his collection were shown to widespread acclaim at the Royal Academy in its controversial "Sensation" show.
But he has also been accused of distorting the market with his prolific purchases. Even the decision to create the bursaries was met with cynicism, with critics pointing out that a comparatively small part of the £1.6m proceeds from his auction at Christie's in 1999 had gone towards this act of philanthropy. The art colleges each received £10,000 a year for their bursaries. Simon Hedges is delighted that Charles Saatchi has stepped in and enabled them to continue to operate. "We were one of the original sites in Shoreditch, yet now we're a lifeboat for what used to be important here.
"We have become isolated as an independent, non- commercial space and it came to the point where we needed support."
