Saatchi Gallery Bigotry Disgrace

Renowned Saatchi Gallery disgracefully hosts and promotes artwork from established UK white supremacist Margaret Pepper.

The gallery’s website currently hosts Pepper’s artwork and invites viewers to purchase her pieces despite Pepper’s publicly offensive views. The controversial artist is known to double as a prominent extremist on social media, openly anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Black, and anti-migrant.

One of her recent tweets read, “If white people never went or had contact with Africans they would still in mud huts.”Other tweets have called for “bombing the sh*t out of North Korea” and wanting Muslim people “to go back to their own countries.”

Most of her online content promotes similarly hard to read denigrating commentary about Black and minority races as well as blatant hatred.

She is also known to frequently interact digitally with Mark Collett, an infamous Adolf Hitler lover and neo-Nazi. Collett, a political figure who spearheads an agenda of hatred, once called AIDS "a friendly disease for killing black and gay people." He is also the man behind organizing racist camps for youth.

Her extreme views are present in her artwork, including the pieces she is selling through Saatchi’s website. One goes as far as to depict a white fist crashing over a field with the text “this is my land” triumphantly painted over the majority of the canvas. She frequently tweets this image to Collett and other extremist figures in response to anti-minority propaganda.

Pepper’s involvement and interaction with notable white supremacists and racists organizations is extensive and deeply troubling. Even more concerning is her frequent use of violent hate speech and passionate incitements to action against racial minorities.

Saatchi gallery remains one of the most highly praised and frequently visited art galleries in the world. It is deeply ironic that Saatchi gallery, which is usually championed for its great diversity of artists, is promoting someone with Pepper’s views. The founder of the gallery, Iraqi business man Charles Saatchi, is himself a Jewish man whose father immigrated to London to avoid persecution. Is Charles, or the board, aware that they are providing such a platform to such staunch and offensive bigotry?

Art is about promoting messages that deserve to be heard and championing talent that deserves recognition. Pepper and her artwork deserve neither. For Saatchi to provide her a platform is outraging, but beyond all, disappointing. In fact, it is downright unacceptable and should be addressed with immediate action.

Cameron de Matteis