(above:Never afraid to court controversy, Saatchi has included a work which chronicles police corruption by presenting stories torn from US tabloid newspapers and sprayed with semen)The gallery, home to Charles Saatchi's collection, was evicted from County Hall on London's Southbank in 2005 after a row with the building's owners.
It has now relocated to the larger Duke of York's HQ building on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Admission to all future shows will be free, thanks to a sponsorship deal with auction house Phillips de Pury. Inaugural exhibition The Revolution Continues: New Art from China will run from 9 October to 18 January 2009. It will feature paintings, sculptures and installations from 30 of China's leading artists.
The new 70,000-sq-ft (6,500-sq-m) gallery will also feature a dedicated space for artists to exhibit and sell their work commission free. The gallery says that a major focus of the Saatchi will be to "establish a ground-breaking education programme to make contemporary art even more accessible to young people".
The gallery left County Hall after the building's owners won a High Court battle to evict it.A judge upheld the claim by Japanese company Shirayama Shokusan that the gallery had shown "deliberate disregard" of the owners' rights.
Breaches included putting works in areas for which they had not paid rent and offering a two-for-one ticket deal.
The Saatchi Gallery opened in a disused paint factory in St John's Wood in 1985 before moving to County Hall in 2003. It has helped launch the careers of artists including Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.
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