Champagne crowd for Richard Wilson at the Saatchi Gallery

The CHELSEA space team had fun at the Saatchi Gallery for the preview of Richard Wilson’s Hold The Line, a new commission for bespoke mobile phone company Vertu.

Richard Wilson's 'Hold The Line' at Saatchi Gallery

For the commission Richard had made a new film and a ‘cityscape’ model both made using parts from Vertu “luxury” phones. The film was a kind of puppet theatre of phone-part characters which were dropped onto drum heads to make a random soundscape.

The Cityscape incorporated the Vertu parts to create a miniature urban sprawl of phone towers and aerial flagpoles.

We met up with lots of friends including the art and architecture publisher Hugh Merrell, architects Frankie and Maxine Pringle, artists Humphrey Ocean and Louise Wilson, De La Warr Pavilion Director Alan Haydon and, of course, Richard Wilson and curator of the commission, our old friend Anthony Fawcett. Italian curator Michele Drascek, who worked with us on the Stephen Willats exhibition, was most impressed though when he bumped into Richard Wiilson’s fellow Royal Academician, Tracey Emin.

Donald Smith introduced CHELSEA space’s Olga Chwilowicz to Robin Klassnik from Matts Gallery who insisted that she couldn’t leave the Saatchi Gallery without experiencing Richard Wilson’s seminal work 20:50 which was originally made for Matts in 1987.

Richard Wilson was as generous and fun as ever and we were grateful to him and Anthony Fawcett for a great evening.