Viewing The Long Now: Saatchi Gallery at 40 at Saatchi Gallery

The Long Now: Saatchi Gallery at 40 (5 November 2025 to 1 March 2026) celebrates a landmark moment for the Saatchi Gallery as it reaches four decades as a contributor to UK culture – and it promises to be far from a standard anniversary show, posing deeper questions about the nature of the gallery model and art practices: what does art look like when it thinks in the long term — which ideas, meanings and materials, endure, decay or transform?

Curated by Philippa Adams, the scope is ambitious: two floors, nine major spaces, a mixture of historic works and new commissions, spanning installation, painting and sculpture. It opens with explorations of process and mark-making, via artists such as Alice Anderson, Rannvá Kunoy and Carolina Mazzolari, before moving through painting (with standout works like Jenny Saville’s Passage from 2004) and into immersive installations – don’t miss Richard Wilson’s 20:50, a chamber filled with recycle engine oil that reflects the architecture like a mirror, shown at the gallery previously but returning here to the top floor for the first time.

Throughout the show, residual themes of climate change, technology, fragility and renewal are threaded via works by, among others, Gavin Turk, Mat Collishaw and Olafur Eliasson – artists who have all been associated with the gallery over the year and have helped define and shape its place as a provocative, experimental space for art. It’s a bold way for Saatchi Gallery to mark forty years—not just by reflecting on forty years of groundbreaking shows, but by looking boldly ahead.