Sadie Coles HQ’s second exhibition in their newly opened Savile Row space takes its cue from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, Oscar Wilde’s darkly comic novella set in a sharply observed Victorian London. Part satire, part moral farce, Wilde’s story — populated by palm readers, poisonous trinkets and melodramatic social obligations — becomes the conceptual springboard for a sprawling group exhibition spanning multiple media and scales.
The setting is fitting. Originally built in 1870 as an arts club, the Savile Row building recalls a time of intimate exhibitions, salons and society gatherings — precisely the kind of milieu Wilde both inhabited and skewered. Restored today, the gallery re-enters a lineage that stretches back to the founding of the Royal Academy, with this exhibition positioned in dialogue with centuries of artistic and social performance embedded in Mayfair.
Staged with a scenography that leans into a maximalist, salon-style aesthetic, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime reimagines the relationship between art, social behaviour and narrative drama. The works engage Wilde’s satire as a lens through which staged human behaviour — then and now — can be examined, exposing the hypocrisies, anxieties and theatricality that underpin social life.
Written in London in 1891, Wilde’s novella gently mocks the moral seriousness of its protagonist and the brittle values of Victorian high society. Its farcical plot — a sequence of failed murder attempts committed in the name of honour and love — exposes superstition, moral obsession and the absurd weight of social expectation. The story’s “pretty little” objects — from a silver bonbonnière to an exploding French clock — parody luxury itself, their polished surfaces concealing threat and instability.
That tension between surface and impulse runs throughout the exhibition. Wilde’s emphasis on performance mirrors a contemporary condition in which identity remains carefully projected, observed and judged. In an age of heightened self-awareness and social anxiety, polished façades still mask private desires, fears and contradictions, while our dependence on the gaze of others remains absolute.
The exhibition brings together an expansive roster of artists, including Lisa Brice, Cecily Brown, Gillian Carnegie, Guglielmo Castelli, Xinyi Cheng, Monster Chetwynd, William N. Copley, Andrew Cranston, Somaya Critchlow, John Currin, Iris van Dongen, Nicole Eisenman, Urs Fischer, Aaron Gilbert, Maggi Hambling, Anthea Hamilton, Kati Heck, Sophie von Hellermann, Chantal Joffe, Sanya Kantarovsky, Sarah Lucas, Tala Madani, Helen Marten, Laura Owens, Celia Paul, Elizabeth Peyton, Wilhelm Sasnal, and many others — forming a dense, theatrical constellation that reflects Wilde’s own medley of characters and contradictions.
Group Exhibition Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, 21st January — 21st March 2026, Sadie Coles HQ, Savile Row
Art Opening Wednesday 21st 6PM -8PM
Categories
Tags
- Aaron Gilbert
- andrew cranston
- Anthea Hamilton
- Cecily Brown
- Celia Paul
- Chantal Joffe
- Elizabeth Peyton
- Gillian Carnegie
- Guglielmo Castelli
- helen marten
- Iris van Dongen
- John Currin
- Kati Heck
- Laura Owens
- Lisa Brice
- Maggi Hambling
- Monster Chetwynd
- Nicole Eisenman
- Sadie Coles HQ
- Sanya Kantarovsky
- Sarah Lucas
- Somaya Critchlow
- Sophie von Hellermann
- Tala Madani
- Urs Fischer
- Wilhelm Sasnal
- William N. Copley
- Xinyi Cheng
