Art that could kill you
I could easily list a dozen ways to justify the £15 adult (£10 student/senior/kid) cost to experience The Long Now, Saatchi Gallery’s celebration of four decades of ground-breaking contemporary art, but top of my list is the inclusion of three opportunities for serious injury.
The warning signs utilise bold and underline font for emphasis and look like this:
Observant and/or litigious readers will have noted that you need not be a twat to risk potential death. You simply have to enter the artworks. You’d assume that nuance shifts the liability onto the artist or gallery, but apparently not. So… let’s examine the risks.
First on the list is Richard Wilson’s 20:50, the least likely to cause actual injury but the one most probable to leave a lasting mark. Literally. It’s a room filled with oil and much like the call of the void the desire to dip a finger is a surprisingly common impulse. I suspect many a scarf or loose item of clothing may not come away unscathed, but as of my visit no one had accidentally dropped in their phone. Yet.
Next we have Gavin Turk’s Bardo, essentially a hall of mirrors maze created with panes of glass that don’t look shatterproof. In fact, they give the firm impression that they wouldn’t even sustain the impact of a large child walking straight into them. This is a 2025 recreation, so it was probably manufactured to stringent health & safety guidelines. Still, I wouldn’t take any chances.
Finally we have Allan Kaprow’s Yard, a pile of dirty tires (spelled the American way, because the artist is) that you can climb on and move them around as you wish. It looks a lot more dangerous than just getting your hands dirty because it’s sitting underneath Conrad Shawcross’s Golden Lotus (Inverted), an actual vintage car that spins above your head while techno beats reverberate. What… Saatchi couldn’t find a disco ball?
My head tells me that Saatchi would have ensured that car has been safely suspended with at least two failsafes in place should any one of those chains break. My inner algophobic made me slither around the edges a bit too fast to get to the section of the tyre pile that wasn’t directly underneath the looming vehicle.
Spoiler alert: I walked away unscathed. More importantly, I cannot begin to convey just how satisfying it was to experience artworks that had actual elements of danger to them. To be allowed to engage with an immersive experience that wasn’t designed for Instagram and hadn’t been Disneyfied to a generic point of blandness. Will this retrospective inspire today’s crop of contemporary artists to be a bit more daring?
Plan your visit
The Long Now: Saatchi Gallery at 40 runs until 01 March 2026.
Tickets from £15 adult / £10 students, seniors & under 16 / children under 6 free
Visit saatchigallery.com and follow @saatchi_gallery on Instagram for more info about the venue.
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