“Who—or what—are Gilbert & George?”
The answer has echoed through art history for half a century. British artists George Passmore and Gilbert Prousch, who met in 1969 at St Martins School of Art, have produced work only together ever since; they have made themselves the art itself. A universe filled with tweed suits, metallic paints, absurd gestures, and ironic slogans—the 25-year retrospective 21st Century Pictures reconstructs a story that completely erases the line between artist and artwork.
Being Art: A Two-Person Mythology
The giant panels installed along the labyrinthine walls of Hayward Gallery resemble stained-glass aesthetics: each work is an icon divided into windows, exploding with intense colors. At the center of every icon are the same figures: Gilbert and George—gods, prophets, and priests of their own cult. In every piece, the duo’s faces are enlarged, multiplied, colored; sometimes on the street, sometimes in a church, sometimes amid screaming newspaper headlines. Texts—“NO NAZIS,” “HOMO RIOT,” “GOD LOVES FUCKING”—employ the aggressive typography of typical British tabloids. But the goal is not to fill the slogans with meaning; it is to reproduce their visual power.
Idol, Image, Brand
Curator Rachel Thomas and her team arranged the works not chronologically but according to emotional intensity. As the viewer progresses between the gallery walls, they realize they are facing not artists but a brand.
Gilbert & George are no longer artists; they have become collectible versions. Each work reproduces their iconography while simultaneously appearing as a product “belonging to the Gilbert & George universe”—ironically, like merchandise rather than sculpture. This self-repetition overturns art history’s modernist myth of “individuality.” They are not individuals but a two-person corporate body.
Between Pop and Protest
Gilbert & George’s language fuses Jeff Koons’s glossy surface with the provocative spirit of punk aesthetics. Yet there is neither a didactic message nor an overt political stance. Their art is about “standing” and “being”—a pose, a gesture, the endless repetition of an image. Amid all this flamboyant chaos, perhaps the clearest message is: “We are already art. You figure out the rest.”
Apartment No:26 Note
This Gilbert & George retrospective is not only a chapter in art history but a phenomenon that holds a mirror to visual culture itself.
Works that blur the line between the sacred and the everyday critique the commodification of art while shining at the very center of that system.
In short: an ironic prayer, an aesthetic joke, and a very British cult that chooses to be part of its own critique.
📅 Dates: 26 October 2025 – 11 January 2026
📍 Venue: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London
🎨 Exhibition: Gilbert & George: 21st Century Pictures
🧭 Curators: Rachel Thomas, Suzanna Petot, Hannah Martin
🌐 southbankcentre.co.uk
