Chapman Brothers

This is the year Jake and Dinos Chapman finally got nominated for the Turner Prize. Never mind that they had to wait so long: if their exhibitions at White Cube last year and Modern Art Oxford earlier this year didn’t have Turner written all over them, then surely a few chewed hats would have been in order.

If you missed those two brilliant shows, then you might want to catch up at the Saatchi Gallery.

Here you’ll see works purchased over the last decade: the White Cube’s faux African figures; Hell, an installation of nine vitrines placed in the shape
of a swastika and containing hundreds of tiny toy soldiers committing acts of fantastical atrocity; a series of delicate etchings; and the early mutant
child mannequins with sexual organs for features.

Hell was the Royal Academy’s showstopper at the Apocalypse exhibition three years ago and this uncomfortable comic-book Holocaust seems to, typically, revel in its ambivalent status.

But, crucially, ambivalence is the necessary element in the Chapman formula.

Elsewhere, the display could have been given more thought, as an unfortunate dilution takes place.

The Chapman Family Collection, the faux primitive sculptures that thrilled at the dimly lit White Cube, has been separated into two rooms with daylight flooding through huge windows, and the mutant children have been scattered
promiscuously around the gallery.