Naked tableau provides suitably artistic stunt for opening of Charles Saatchi's BritArt collection

The presence of Charles Saatchi's girlfriend, Nigella Lawson, the photographer David Bailey and a host of celebrities at the launch of his new gallery was eclipsed last night by 160 naked models forming an artistic installation on a nearby courtyard.

The artistic stunt could have created no better advertisement for the former adman whose gallery at County Hall in London will showpiece the seminal works of Young British Artists.

The nudes, who were arranged into photographic landscapes at dusk near the river Thames by the artist Spencer Tunick, showed that Mr Saatchi has not lost his touch for creating sensationalism around his art.

The naked tableau by Mr Tunick, who has been arrested while photographing such displays in the past 11 years, would have sat comfortably alongside any of the works displayed inside which include Tracey Emin's Unmade Bed, Damien Hirst's shark and Marcus Harvey's Myra Hindley portrait.

Celebrities at the lavish party, which sported a 1,000-strong guestlist, crowded around the naked formation, which included a pregnant woman and another model with a hand in plaster cast, to discuss the pieces's artistic merits.

"It's good to have an artistic reason for watching this sort of thing, and you don't have to pay Soho prices," quipped the actor Stephen Fry.

Mr Saatchi was not there to great his guests as his publicists had expected ("Charles simply hates parties," his spokesman William Miller had said), leaving a Versace-clad Ms Lawson greeted guests from the spectrum of Britain's art and showbusiness establishment.

Ms Emin reflected on her own works of art alongside the model Jerry Hall, the actor Jeremy Irons, the jeweller Jade Jagger, the model Sophie Anderton, and the singer Gavin Rossdale with his wife Gwen Stefani.

The guestlist extended itself to old Tories Michael Heseltine and Michael Howard, figures who served as a reminder of Mr Saatchi's important contribution to the success of the Conservative Party. He masterminded the party's election campaigns with his brother Maurice at the beginning of Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister.

Guests navigating the labyrinthine rooms of the old GLC building praised the shocking artpieces and defended Mr Saatchi's vision for a gallery that houses Britain's most contemporary works of art, in spite of the criticism it has received from some quarters.

Standing next to a work by Hirst consisting of a cow's severed head in a glass cage, the record producer Pete Waterman said: "I love this stuff ... maggots and all. Art should make you look deeper, and this does."

Pickled works by Hirst as well as a fish tank containing a computer, a birthing bed and rooms with coloured discs are scattered through the gallery, interspersed with works by Ms Emin, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Jake and Dinos Chapman's montage of mutilated mannequins.

The gallery, which hopes to attract up to 750,000 visitors a year, will open its doors to the public tomorrow, and marks Saatchi's relocation from St John's Wood, north-west London. It overlooks the Houses of Parliament and is a short walk from the London Eye, two of the capital's biggest tourist attractions.