When the Gallery Came to Us

April 2020. The world had gone quiet in a way none of us had ever experienced. Streets empty, studios suddenly feeling both like sanctuaries and cages. For galleries and museums — spaces built entirely around the physical encounter between a person and a work of art — the lockdown posed a question nobody had prepared for: now what?

The Saatchi Gallery is one of the most influential contemporary art spaces in the world. Based in the Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea, London, it has long championed new and emerging artists, introducing the world to movements like the Young British Artists — the generation that included Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Unlike traditional institutions, Saatchi built its reputation on provocation, surprise, and a genuine appetite for the new.

The Saatchi Gallery in London had an answer, and to my great surprise, it involved me. I was invited to host a live online event. There was a strange urgency to it, a feeling that if we were going to do something, we shouldn't wait. The event unfolded in four parts:

• In Conversation — A discussion with Saatchi curators, going beyond the work itself to dig into the ideas, questions, and obsessions that drive it.

• Studio Tour — A walkthrough of my working space: the tools, the clutter, the pinned references, the things that never make it into any polished artist statement.

• Live Demonstration — A quick sketch of the gallery building itself — drawn live, in real time, as I narrated the process and the choices behind every line.

• Q&A — The audience got to ask anything. And they did.

The remarkable part was not the technology or the novelty of it all. It was the intimacy. Somehow, inviting people into your actual working space — messy desk and all — created a closeness that a white-walled gallery opening rarely does. Final note - need to remark the contrast - the lockdown, while limiting social interactions, brings new platforms to connect. Probably stating the obvious here…