Friday, April 5/2013

To the Saatchi Gallery, always a favourite. Not only always free but very friendly - nothing ever roped off, just a reminder to parents to prevent children touching. The featured exhibitions today are contemporary Russian. Some wit and quite a lot of despair, with a set of black and white photographs by Vikenti Nilin showing people perched precariously, if not suicidally, on window ledges and balcony railings - the floor centre occupied by a splatted humanoid form in black plastic. There`s also a truly disturbing exhibition of Boris Mikhailov's photographs portraying a degraded segment of the population - abused, alcoholic, sexual but scarcely arousing. Exploitation or documentary? The whole exhibition is entitled "Gaiety is the Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union" - heavily ironic and very sad, in a post-Soviet Russia where there is not even the Communist safety net and a great many marginalised people staring into the abyss. But some wit as well - the statue of a woman who is rounded off like a Russian doll, to the fascination of a very small girl.