Once Upon a Time in London | Saatchi Yates
On one hand, you could say this exhibition is invigoratingly ambitious. On the other, you could say it’s just an epic, empty show-off. I’m in the middle, somewhere.
The dense hang could be a nod to the Summer Exhibition, just up the road at the Royal Academy. (The fact that the exhibition dates almost exactly match - with the Saatchi Yates show opening five days earlier and closing on the same day - could be a coincidence, or could be cheekiness.) The only difference is, here everybody is famous. And the average cost per work will be much, much higher.
So, the list includes Lucian Freud (three copper etchings - I had never seen one of his etchings before!), a Tracey Emin neon, a murky Leon Kossoff landscape, a couple of Francis Bacon portraits. Jenny Saville, Chris Ofili, Paula Rego - the list goes on.
A few contemporary artists are dotted around, like trailing space dust around the stars. One that caught my eye is Joanna van Son, whose beautiful show at General Assembly I’d enjoyed earlier in the year. Her dreamy, thickly-impasto’d group portrait faces a small yellow-hued work by Frank Auerbach: her big inspiration.
The show as a whole testifies to the bumptious ambition of the gallery that houses it. The press release reveals that Saatchi Yates has launched a membership scheme (just like the RA!) and launched a tea towel from a celebrity interior designer to commemorate the exhibition. It’s called Arts Things Nicky Haslam Finds Common.
Once Upon a Time in London is at Saatchi Yates (London). 12 June - 17 August 2025