Tie dye, embroidery, pottery, Plasticine, wood carving - it can only be the next big thing from the cutting edge of contemporary art.

The works might seem a refreshing change of tone at the Saatchi Gallery, whose last show included photographs of naked children and attracted the attention of the Metropolitan police obscenity squad.

However, the reclining nude modelled in French fries and the Grecian urns decorated with graphic sex scenes and a video of a Plasticine woman masturbating are unlikely to turn up in the crafts tent at a village fete.

They have in common that they are all hand made, with exquisite craftsmanship, and the work of the latest generation of young artists to be snapped up by Charles Saatchi, collector of contemporary art. He has become notorious for buying entire graduate shows of young artists, or the entire studios of work of artists he admires.

He came up with the title of the exhibition - New Labour - but the government spoiled his joke by postponing the general election, which would have coincided with the exhibition opening.

Curator Jenny Blyth said: "It's not right to talk about craft or handiwork; there's nothing folksy or crafty about these works. We are seeing a reaction to some of the machine made art and a new interest in artists making things themselves."

The artists include Enrico David, born in Ancona, Italy, in 1966 and a graduate of Central St Martins, whose images of high heeled flower headed women, worked in wool and embroidery on dyed canvas, have been described as "cro cheted super-villains of Marvel comics".

Ms Blyth has had to stretch curator-speak to the limits to describe the artists in the exhibition. She describes the work of DJ Simpson, as "somewhere between a chainsaw massacre and the dance of a bumblebee". His huge panels are first cousins to posh work tops, laminated in aluminium or Formica on to chipboard, and then assaulted with an electric router. The gouged surface is then said to recall the Australian outback, with gullies and dried river beds in a parched landscape.

She regards the 32 large pots made by Grayson Perry, who was born in Essex in 1960, as among the most beautifully made works in the show. Some are shaped like Chinese Ming vases, others like Grecian urns, with incised decoration.

"They appear classically perfect and beautiful, but when you look closely at the surface you can see that he has applied a completely contemporary twist _ he's very interested in consumerism, so there are lots of images such as mobile phones and sex scenes - like the ancient Greeks, adorning their pots with sexual encounters _ I think they're going to be a revelation."