Ethan Price on Gilbert & George’s current presentation at Hayward Gallery, a lurid love letter to the delirium of a city and a century.
The city as a broiling, volatile, virtually elemental site — a ceaseless configuration of event and emotion, dictated by sudden swerves of fate. — Michael Bracewell, The Space Between
Twenty-five years in, the artists Gilbert & George have worked their way through the entrance and lobby of the twenty-first century. Peering into the first rooms of this uneasy era, what do the artists see? What have they to show us — about our society, about the city, about London? In their characteristically succinct and perfectly named exhibition ‘21ST CENTURY PICTURES’, they present us with all we need to know about the last quarter of a century of human experience.
Right from the off — three years into the century — they had already merged with their beloved East End. Twenty-Eight Streets (2003) depicts the artist duo as ghostly imprints on the grimy streets that have encircled them since they moved to Fournier Street, just off Brick Lane, in the sixties. Street names from E1 — Princelet, Greatorex, Henriques — create a doorway around the spectral figures of the duo. Fleas replace the ampersand usually appearing between their names: G(flea)G. All is black, white, grey, red. The piece cavorts with death — of the artists, of their little world eating them up, of the parasites closing in and absorbing them into the streets they have used as their medium for decades. As always, even in this macabre self-portrait, they are laughing with — never at — us. This is important. At the centre of the Gilbert & George world is invitation; within every picture, an open hand ushers the viewer to enter.
What is displayed in Gilbert & George’s pictures is ultimately a statement of feelings, a concern for the totality of modern experience. The mission is always emotion over intellect. They wish for each viewer to understand what they are communicating: the anatomy of London, and therefore the contemplation of mankind. At a talk with the artists as part of the Hayward Gallery’s public programming for the exhibition, they were asked why they have the names and dates printed on each picture. “Well, we’re not some of those artists that call everything Untitled — how silly can you get?” Gilbert & George are outliers in an art world that is often intentionally oblique. What they create is a ‘pulp modernism’ in a similar vein to that which Mark Fisher, in his book K-Punk, describes the work of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith. It is vernacular. It is direct and comes directly from the guts. Over-intellectualisation is rife, ruining the connection that can be made between the artist and the viewer. Clouded in the cryptic, what is the point of a piece of art? Gilbert & George have stated their work is a “love letter to the viewer.” At the Hayward, I have come to collect mine.
Their modern city is rendered in relentlessly toxic colours that complement the emotional vertigo so synonymous with the now. Magic realist visions created from the mundane map of humanity are forever inflected with mischief. “20 YEAR OLD London lad, hot and horny, smooth and tanned and well equipped, so don’t be shy, give me a try. Call Danny on 0171 407 6427,” reads one square of Ages (2001), in which the duo is surrounded by gay men’s classified ads, George with an emotionless direct stare and Gilbert with one eyebrow raised, daring you to call for a good time.
They depict their world (and ours — here the local is the global) with utter lucidity. In an early-career interview with Anne Seymour, published in the Hayward’s group exhibition catalogue The New Art (1972), they set out their ideology: “We have this title “Art for All” which we’ve always been very interested in and it has different meanings for us all the time. That’s all we do really — re-form our understanding of that sentence.” So, what do they believe is for all? It is sex, alienation, obliteration, anti-authoritarianism, passion. It is shit, piss, semen. Vice, that most human of things, is depicted everywhere, but devoid of moralisation. Recalling their work A Drinking Sculpture (1974), On The Bench (2019) is a portrayal of situations many of us have been in. Inebriated and passed out on a public bench, heady kaleidoscopic purples and greens circulate about the pair. In Scapegoated (2013), nitrous oxide canisters with the royal coat of arms etched into them are positioned over the duo’s groins, alongside phrases that are silly yet explosive: ‘TURN ON A NUN’, ‘SPIT IN THE FONT’.
Such linguistic naughtiness belies a serious reconsideration of our relationship to religion — “ban religion” is a phrase the pair like to reiterate. Images of pixies abound, depicted in a guise often seen on horse brasses or door knockers. In pictures such as Heterodoxy (2005) and Akimbo (2005), they are presented as an antidote to religion. The pixie is mischievous, against restraint. It is about being saucy. Gilbert & George are saucy. It is fitting that such an image would continue to populate their pictures — the pixie cheekily rupturing the hallowed crucifixes, grinning and lip-smacking. Elsewhere, in Was Jesus Heterosexual? (2005), in chemical yellow against electric blue and adorning an enormous collage of crucifixes is writ large: ‘GOD LOVES FUCKING ENJOY’.
Combining the sacred and mundane, or just simply combining — taking it all in and leaving nothing out — is key to the duo. In pictures like They Shot Them! (2014) and Gents (2014), lines such as ‘Geordies are black and white. Boot out the EDL and nazis!’ appear next to images of men’s public toilets. The artists twin the profound or terrifying with something as base as a public convenience: nothing is off limits. All is integral.
There are moments in the exhibition that are undeniably moving — love is always a part of the art. Sleepover (2022) shows the pair asleep in their suits on a bed of bones. It’s a tender moment in which the viewer is reminded that these two men are lovers first and living sculptures second. I saw the Philharmonia Orchestra perform ‘Gilbert & George: Sex, Money, Race, Religion’ at the Royal Festival Hall, in which the duo set music to their art. Wagner’s ‘Liebstod from Tristan and Isolde’ played during the ‘Sex’ segment of the evening, with the final picture shown in parallel to the music being Sleepover. Liebstod, meaning ‘love in death’, imbues the image with an arresting quality — to see these two men and their utterly entwined lives shown in a premonition of their final sleep. When the segment closed, I noticed a woman in the row in front of me staring at Sleepover and weeping.
In the later pictures, the pair are increasingly disoriented, whirling. Posing is off-kilter, their facial expressions confused, scared, or worried. Has the symbiotic relationship with the city they once enjoyed now become parasitic? Perhaps London is consuming. Inebriation flourishes, but with what poison? The overwhelm of life? In Funky (2020) — whilst Dom Perignon corks fly towards them in a filthy, graffiti-covered doorway — the pair look as though they’re about to pass out, or that they are cowering from an out-of-frame attacker. The door shows a rudimentary drawing of a bald man smiling with an enormous spliff between his lips. This increasingly uneasy work can also be seen in Bed-Wetting (2019), Bagrave(2020), Slugged (2021), and Ha-Ha (2022). Rest (2019) is a standout picture, showing the artists shuddering on benches, hallucinogenic man-sized flowers looming above them. The work is visual nausea — there is no “rest” present.
Never be fooled by Gilbert & George’s delight in fun. As they said in their postal sculpture A Message from the Sculptors(1970), they have “the most serious intentions in the world.” In an anchoring, quadripartite work around which the exhibition pivots, Sex Money Race Religion (2016), there is a poignant story being told. Buying an alcopop from their favourite corner shop on their way to dinner was a part of their daily routine. One evening, on entering the shop, the pair were greeted by a different shopkeeper from the one they were used to seeing. Enquiring where their friend was, the new shopkeeper told them that their friend had hung himself. Upon returning home to Fournier Street, grief-stricken, Gilbert & George searched for the reason such a handsome, friendly, seemingly happy young man would do such a thing. Four words would not leave their thoughts — the four things that make everything happen: sex, money, race, religion. Ultra-modernity is key to Gilbert & George, but with these four enormous words, the duo bring everything from humanity’s past, beating down the door of 2025.
