China's leading young artists will be showcased when London's giant Saatchi Gallery reopens Thursday in a new venue after a three-year closure.

The Saatchi Gallery reopens its doors with an inaugural exhibition, "The Revolution Continues: New Art From China", featuring some 30 top artists.

The show promises to be a "cutting edge survey of recent painting, sculpture and installation."

The gallery, owned by maverick art collector Charles Saatchi, has moved to the impressive, neo-classical Duke of York Headquarters building, a former military barracks, in the plush Chelsea district of west London.

With 70,000 square feet (6,500 square metres) of floor space, the gallery boasts of being the only free entry contemporary art museum of its size in the world.

Free admission to all shows is part of the gallery's aim of bringing contemporary art to the widest possible audience. The gallery hopes to attract one million visitors per year.

The Chinese art exhibition includes Liu Wei's "Indigestion II", a huge pile of fake excrement, described as "a man-sized statement of rejection... leaving no detail to the imagination", which includes hundreds of toy soldiers.

Liu's "Love It! Bite It!" is a model city of Western culture's "tastiest bits" built from dog chews, including the Rome Colosseum and the Guggenheim museum.

"Chinese Offspring", by Zhang Dali, features 15 life-sized figures, each representing a migrant construction worker, hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Meanwhile "Old Persons' Home" by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu presents satirical models of pensioners in wheelchairs who bear some resemblance to world leaders.

The withered figures roll slowly and aimlessly around the basement. One carries scissors, another a can of beer.

"Donkey" by Zhang Huan, features a donkey mounting Shanghai's Jin Mao Tower, ridiculing the masculine connotations of skyscrapers.

Former advertising guru Saatchi is known for spotting emerging talent in the art world, notably the wave of Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Born into a prosperous Jewish family in Iraq in 1943, the family fled to Britain when Saatchi was a child.

With his brother Maurice, he formed the Saatchi and Saatchi, which became one of the world's most important advertising agencies during the 1980s.

The firm took charge of the British Conservative Party's 1979 election campaign that saw Margaret Thatcher swept to power as prime minister.

Saatchi opened his first gallery in 1985 in an old paint factory in north London before moving to County Hall, the British capital's former administrative headquarters on the south bank of the River Thames, in 2003.

However, the gallery closed there in 2005 due to a tenancy dispute.

"The Revolution Continues: New Art From China" runs until January 18.