Some twelve months ago, when the global economy was in ruder health, leading commentators were drawing comparisons between the emerging wealth of China and India and their flourishing art scenes. It was therefore only a matter of time before the Middle East was seized upon. China, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East – Saudi Arabia in particular – have been celebrated for their contemporary art scenes. Countries recognized for their political and social situations are being revalued for their cultural production. Could it be that a booming economy is a sure sign of a thriving artistic environment?

Edge of Arabia is a survey of works from Saudi Arabia that exists against a background of such intellectual exposure and market interest. It can become almost impossible to discuss these works, the artists and their potential without thinking three or fours years ahead to solo shows at other London galleries. For Edge of Arabia gives one a sense of being in a privileged position.

Some seventeen artists are drawn together in this contemporary survey of works, two of whom, Lulwah al-Homoud and Ahmed Mater al-Ziad Aseeri, co-curated the final exhibition. This is a serious take on what is current across Saudi Arabia. For the third curator and spearhead, Stephen Stapleton, the project became a crusade to expose the audience to a new cultural phenomenon. In conversation Stapleton lays down the scale of what was achieved in the many months of research: I travelled numerous times and covered over 5,000 miles across Saudi (Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Al-Qatif, Abha and Khamis Mushait), meeting artists with Ahmed Mater Aseeri and Abdulnasser Gharem. I usually visited the artists’ studios, homes or the places that inspired them, including mountain villages, motorway construction sites, markets, hotels, palaces and malls.

The works, sculptural, photographic, performative, painted and ready-made, are cleverly assembled in the slightly sterile setting of the Brunei Gallery at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Abdulaziz Ashour’s interpretation of the first Gulf War, which resembles the stylized motifs of Spanish painter Joan Miró, is a work compelling for its silence. Reem al-Faisal’s large black-and-white photographs demonstrate a thoroughly politicized vibrancy that illuminates the individuals from their backgrounds. Ahmed Mater al-Ziad Aseeri’s series of works, using X-rays and printed paper, cross over from his professional occupation as a doctor. Maha Malluh works allude to the idea of surveillance, illustrating the outline of objects of cultural significance as they move across the line of investigation. Ayman Yossri Daydban deals in commodity culture and Manal al-Dowayan’s photo-works resemble some of the persuasive and performative realities of artist Shirin Neshat.

The level of sophistication with which this exhibition has been put together merits much applause: it successfully represents a country that is more familiar for its politics than its art practice. Stapleton and his colleagues have engaged in an exhibition of accomplished works that go some way to suggest that Saudi art is thriving with both established and emerging artists, who, given time, will be as familiar to us as they are to the Asian art market now. As Stapleton says:

There are so many gaps which the market fails to find. This is because art and art movements emerge on the streets. The market is in danger of being very lazy, it would rather you have a packaged product which arrives on its doorstep in New York, London and Dubai… This is why so many Middle Eastern shows are dominated by artists who no longer live in their countries of origin and have often been educated or have lived their lives in the West.

Credit goes to the exhibition organizers for conceiving of such a show now for London. Edge of Arabia successfully manages to write a contemporary history of the art scene in Saudi Arabia. The test, when it comes, is in the aftershock, when the artworks take precedence and the edge can begin to occupy the middle.