Saatchi Yates to partner with Isamaya Ffrench to launch Studio Iron, the inaugural exhibition of Ffrench’s new design gallery—an ambitious platform aimed at dismantling the hierarchies between art, design and object.
Opening on 30th April and running until 7th June, the exhibition will unfold as a dense, post-industrial landscape where steel and iron dominate. Furniture, sculpture, installation and painting will collide in a space that resists clear categorisation, hovering between function and non-function, utility and image.
The tone will be set by Jannis Kounellis, whose heavy wall-mounted steel work draws on his Arte Povera roots, grounding the exhibition in material weight and industrial residue. Nearby, Paul McCarthy will inject a disruptive note with a large-scale inflatable sculpture that twists the language of pop into something both absurd and confrontational.
Elsewhere, Jordan Wolfson presents a chair plastered in bumper stickers—an overload of competing messages that transforms a functional object into a site of visual noise. Anne Imhof contributes two benches, each paired with a casually draped football, evoking the uneasy stillness of transitional spaces—locker rooms, waiting areas, places defined as much by absence as presence.
The exhibition’s engagement with domestic space will shift register in a film installation by Marina Abramovic, where the artist appears to levitate within a kitchen setting, unsettling the familiarity of everyday interiors. Meanwhile, Nico Vascellari’s Visita Interiora Terrae (2020) pushes the body to its limits, documenting a performance in which he was suspended unconscious beneath a helicopter—an act that transforms fear into a form of material and psychological confrontation.
Additional works by Hannah Levy, Kelly Wearstler, Marco Panconesi, Miriam Cahn, Marlene Dumas, Peter John and Anselm Kiefer extend this atmosphere of tension and unease, reflecting on the increasingly psychological conditions of contemporary life.
As the first statement from Studio Iron, the exhibition reads as both proposition and provocation. Rather than presenting art and design as separate disciplines, it stages their collision—producing a raw, austere environment where objects are stripped back, reconfigured and made unstable.
At its core, Studio Iron suggests a shift in how we encounter objects today: not as fixed categories, but as fluid forms shaped by context, material and meaning.
Studio Iron, 30th April to 7th June 2026, Saatchi Yates
About
Isamaya Ffrench is a British creative director, makeup artist, and entrepreneur who founded her eponymous
beauty brand, ISAMAYA, in 2022. Her work sits at the intersection of art and technique, transforming makeup
into a medium for exploring identity and reimagining what beauty can mean.
Isamaya is a visionary known for her boundary-pushing work across fashion, beauty, sports, and music. She
has held influential creative roles at Tom Ford Beauty, Burberry Beauty, Byredo, and Nike, where her work
has consistently challenged conventional aesthetics and pushed the industry toward more experimental,
gender-fluid expressions. She has led major campaigns and editorial projects for artists including Madonna,
Charli XCX, Zendaya, Cher, and Rihanna, and her work regularly appears in Vogue, i-D, DAZED, W, and
Business of Fashion. Her signature style, merging technical mastery with bold, sculptural forms, has made
her one of the most sought-after creatives in both editorial and runway circles.
In addition to her work in beauty, Isamaya serves on the board of the British Beauty Council, where she
advocates for innovation, inclusivity, and creative freedom within the industry. She is currently producing a
documentary exploring the historical and cultural origins of today’s beauty standards, furthering her
commitment to questioning and reshaping the narratives that define how beauty is perceived and performed.
