School of Saatchi
BBC2 Mondays 9pm
The programme where Charles Saatchi, of Saatchi & Saatchi advertising, searches for the Next Big Thing in contemporary art. The Art itself is created with the same skill and insanity as Frankenstein’s monster. A canvas here, a power drill there and a ‘gift’ of 2000 flat breads.
The reason I began to watch this programme is to see art in progress and to learn about the thoughts and skills of upcoming artists. However, that is not the reason I keep coming back. We all have that one thing we love to hate - be it Aoife’s crazy eyes (the apprentice) or Jedwards’ hair. In School of Saatchi, it’s Saad.
From the very first episode I have liked Saad’s work. His entry piece was a collection of seemingly blank canvases but along the sides were paintings. This was to represent the marginallised society he was a part of in being a London Pakistani. The large piece he led in their Hastings project was of ghosts of beach huts. Again, the work really stood out.
The thing is, as much as I may like his work, he himself drives me absolutely nuts! He comes across as a self obsessed, ego-centric, ‘one step away from a childish tantrum’ prima donna. This week was no exception.
In this month’s project our group of six artists (Samuel Zealey, Eugenie Scrase, Matt Clark, Saad Qureshi, Ben Lowe and Suki Chan) went to Sudeley castle in the Cotswolds. Their task was to choose an item from one of three rooms and replace it with contemporary art. The head of the Dent-Brocklehurst family, who live in the castle, would then judge who had succeeded in this.
Watching the artists work within the spaces and develop their ideas shows just how their minds work. Eugenie in particular comes across as the biggest ‘chancer’. Her reasons for her art are quite flimsy. At one point she decides to turn off the motion of her piece, making it static only, saying “they’ll imagine it go round … it’ll make them think more about Things.” Others have some good ideas but have trouble translating that into a real object. In this case, it’s Matt who had the nice idea of using the body itself as a way of transmitting sound, but the way he executed it made people more concerned about being electrocuted in it!
And then there was Saad. Saad’s idea was a gift from him (and his family) to the Lady of Sudeley castle of 2 thousand chapatis (flat bread) which he would place in the middle of the floor. The advisor to help them with their ideas, this week in the the guise of Matt Colishaw, took one look at Saad’s proposal and called it “Lame”. Cue one of Saad’s almost trademark rants on the indignities of his work being called “Lame”. This certainly was not going to stop him from going ahead.
I laughed out loud, when, as a precursor to the main piece, he posted a single chapati to Lady Dent-Brocklehurst Inevitably, it had gone black with mold by the time she got it. He then rants about another artist who is in the same space and interfering with the impact he sought to make. His work is about love and now he has none - “she just drained it all out of me”. He’s got the artist temperament down pat anyway.
Yet, I will be back next week. Because, next week, the artists have to create something for the Saatchi Gallery itself. I’m just dying to see what Saad does, I don’t what it is yet but I can guarantee somehow, he’ll make himself the centre of it.
The BBC site and related links can be found here.
‘This is not art’ photo by Mat Honan
