I found this a varied show, at times moving especially the portrait photographs of poor Russians by Boris Mikhailov, and being a Saatchi show it was also at time rude, horrific but always interesting. I liked Dasha Fursey's jars containing pickled traditional Russian food's.
Like a lot of this exhibition there is always the spectre of the history of Russia and the Soviet Union and it's shortages in Fursey's work. The USSR
also looms large in Sergei Vasiliev's photograph's. He was a prison warder under communism and he continued a project begun by a collegue to document the tattoo's of the prison inmates.
Tattooing
was illegal, so the images were made using scalpels and melted boot heels, these were hard men who often did not expect to ever be released. The tattoo's were a form of defiance to the state.
On the top floor of the gallery there was another, related, exhibition which has now unfortunately closed, Breaking the Ice: Moscow Art 1960-80's. As much of 'Gaity' looks back to, and is informed by the Soviet period the two exhibition's complemented each other very well but to be honest I prefered Breaking the Ice. Things somehow always become more interesting when they are from the Soviet period as questions always occur such as 'what were the artists permitted to produce?' 'how careful did they have to be to avoid censorship?' etc. Having said that perhaps I'm not the best judge as I'm always more interested by anything from the Soviet period ... wouldn't wanted to have lived there but always fascinated by it.
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