Saatchi pulls in the crowds, but shock factor has disappeared

The buzz of excitement at the public opening of Charles Saatchi's gallery on the South Bank of the Thames yesterday was not limited to the crowds who were queuing outside.

Rumour had it that a swarm of flies had escaped from Damien Hirst's A Thousand Years, a glass case installation featuring hundreds of the insects, as well as a considerable number of maggots, gorging on a decomposing cow's head. Security guards were called to investigate.

Visitors occupied themselves by trying to catch the flies in cigarette boxes to sell to prospective buyers as genuine pieces of Young British Art.

Attendance was brisk rather than spectacular for a city growing accustomed to artistic blockbusters. The most popular exhibits had a 30-minute waiting time. Others were more readily approachable.

A modest crowd of tourists, art students and day-trippers stumbled past what seemed to be a body in a dirty sleeping bag. "Is that part of the show or not?" said one woman, pointing to a cast bronze sculpture by Gavin Turk. The homeless figure, with mannequins of exhausted backpackers and women pushing prams, stood in the entrance hall in an attempt to unsettle the visitors' notion of reality. It was clearly having some effect.

The central exhibition hall, once a Greater London Council debating chamber, and the 22 rooms of the gallery, which house the many "once-shocking" pieces by Hirst, Tracey Emin and Marcus Harvey, held few other surprises for visitors.

"I have seen pictures of most of this stuff so I am not shocked by it. I really just wanted to come and see it all in the flesh," said Rachel Couley, a scientist from London, as she stood aside Harvey's controversial portrait of Myra Hindley.

Animated tourists chattered around visions of surgical equipment in a fish tank, cow dung, Hirst's enormous shark in formaldehyde, bloodied mannequins dangling from trees and Sarah Lucas's Bunny, showing a woman's splayed legs on a chair.

Some visitors saw the wit in the works and chuckled at the exhibits.

A circle of art students fiercely defended the need for such a gallery to exist in a central location. Nicole Regan, 19, studying at Central St Martins college, said: "All of this stuff is brilliant. I have come to study it and it's incredibly powerful. You can get up close to it as there are no barriers. This is a specific British arts movement and it needs to be recognised."

The biggest queues formed around Richard Wilson's exhibit 20:50, in which he fills a room with engine oil. Anthony Murombe, 25, said: "I'm not sure it was worth the 35-minute wait. I am not sure if it was art but it was visually spectacular nevertheless."

Others remained unimpressed by the assortment of severed animal flesh and faeces served up to them. Vicky Ledger from Coventry said she had far preferred the majestic Titian exhibition, just down the river at the Tate. Moving forward five centuries, Betty Harding, 59, felt the irony was too close for comfort. Standing near Hirst's Beautiful, Cheap, Shitty, Too Easy ... she sighed: "That just about sums it up."