Viewing The Raw & The Cooked

Medieval moderns.

Saatchi Gallery turns back the clock this August with The Raw & The Cooked, a free exhibition in Gallery 3 that brings medieval traditions into contact with contemporary art. Curated by Harry Jones London, the show gathers eleven artists whose work looks to centuries-old forms while keeping a firm grip on the present.

The medieval is having a moment, but this exhibition treats it as much more than aesthetic dressing. Across the show, artists draw on spiritual uncertainty, political upheaval, folklore and mortality, asking why the old symbols still have such force in modern life. In a culture that often behaves as if everything begins and ends on a screen, The Raw & The Cooked turns towards the handmade and the stubbornly physical.

The materials involved do much of the talking. Leatherwork, metalwork, woodwork, painting, ceramics and even baking appear across the exhibition, making the show feel deliberately grounded in process. The artist list includes Emmanuel Awuni, Anna Brass, Simon Callery, Caitlin Hazell, James Lang, Timothy Hon Hung Lee, Harry Jones London, Jessica Luostarinen, Elle Perkins, Jakob Rowlinson and Eva Sajovic.

The title borrows from a familiar opposition, but the show seems more interested in what happens between the two states: refinement and ritual, craft and violence, old belief and contemporary unease. Free to visit and running for just over a month, it is a sharp late-summer reason to head to Chelsea.