Released on: July 16, 2008, 8:51 pm

Press Release Author: Annabel Fallon

Industry: Entertainment

Press Release Summary: A world class Art Gallery based in London. Presenting art by
largely unseen young artists or by established international artists whose work has
been rarely exhibited through London UK art gallery.

Press Release Body: The Saatchi Gallery has launched an online international art
competition open to all artists and students from around the world. The winning work
from the competition will be displayed for three months in the new Saatchi Gallery
when it opens later this year.

This competition, Showdown, asks any artist who wishes to take part to upload an
image of their art onto Your Gallery online site (www.saatchigallery.com/showdown).
All visitors to the site are then free to vote on all artworks, scoring them from
one to ten (one being the lowest score and ten the highest). Voting will start on
Monday March 5 at 9am and will run for the next seven days. The two artworks with
the highest overall scores will then go head-to-head with visitors voting on these
two head-to-head works for a further seven days. After twelve rounds all the
head-to-head victors enter a knockout phase, until the final showdown, to choose an
overall winner. Throughout the seven day head-to-head vote, artists are able to
enter one of their works for the next round of the contest, so that the process is
continuous. Artists are able to enter every round of the contest that they wish to.
The competition will last six months with the winning artist receiving £1000 in
prize money as well as a place in The Saatchi Gallery for three months. The runner
up will also receive £750.

Showdown opened to artists to upload an image of their work for the competition at
the beginning of this week (February 26). Daily hits to the site since Showdown was
launched have almost doubled to just over 10 million per day. The competition was
created by The Saatchi Gallery team as a way for artists to show their work to a
wide audience. A spokesperson for The Saatchi Gallery said: "Our team here are
constantly searching for new ways for artists on our site to get their work seen;
and judging by the number of hits the site is receiving per day so far, we expect
the winning artist's work to have been voted for by a big international audience."

Showdown is an addition to Your Gallery (www.saatchigallery.com/YourGallery) an
online initiative created by The Saatchi Gallery that provides a free global
platform for all artists to promote their work. Through Your Gallery, more than
40,000 artists and 6,000 students are now using the established banner of The
Saatchi Gallery to introduce a wave of diverse new works to a far broader audience
than they might otherwise reach. The Saatchi Gallery logs an average of 40 million
hits a day, as artists, collectors, dealers, students, and all those interested in
contemporary art access visuals and information directly, view the site's online
daily magazine and blog, and chat live. The artists, including many promising young
students, represent every aspect and trend in modern art, including video. The
Saatchi Gallery website is now the largest interactive art gallery in the world.


Web Site: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Contact Details: Annabel Fallon of The Saatchi Gallery Press Office:
annabel@saatchigallery.com
Tel: 0207 811 5007/07771 551677