Gilbert & George Present Their ‘First and Last’ New Zealand Exhibition
The duo, who draw inspiration from daily walks in East London, came a long way to share work that's paradoxically normal and weird.
Gilbert & George, Singing Sculpture (1991). Courtesy the artists and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore travelled halfway around the world for the opening of Gilbert & George: The Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland Exhibition 2022. Asked if this is their first New Zealand show, they quipped that it will be their 'first and last'.
Put that down to fatigue. Having flown in from London, where they've lived as a couple since 1968, they told TV station 1News they were 'jet fagged'.
The exhibition — which opened at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki during Pride Month on 25 June, and continues until 11 September — is a spectacular showcase of works made since 2008.
These include the Union Jack series 'Jack Freak Pictures' (2008); the 'London Pictures' (2011), in which 5,000 posters from a local newsagents are sorted by key words like 'death', 'teen', 'money', 'sex pest', 'cyclist', 'addict', and 'terror'; and 'New Normal' (2020), which was inspired by the half-deserted streets of London during the pandemic.
Pointing to the masks in Ark and Jagonari (2013) the duo invoked the idiom 'life follows art'.
'Covid broke out and all of the journalists said you are going to do something with masks,' George shared. 'I said no, no we did that already.'
Among the most provocative works are: an alter piece George proudly refers to as 'Jesus in lycra'; a work that explores the origins and the legacy of the Nazi Hakenkreuz (incorrectly known as the swastika); and In the Mind of the Beholder (2008), which Gilbert endearingly describes as 'the arsehole eye'.
Known for drawing their inspiration from what they see on daily walks between their home and favourite restaurant, much of the imagery Gilbert & George utilise is omnipresent but somehow unseen.
Visuals include burglar alarms and barbed wire, bus stops, seedy advertisements offering sex and help for shy men, and drug bags and nitrous oxide canisters discarded by partiers.
Gilbert & George try to balance the extraordinary and the everyday in their work.
'We don't want to be normal because everybody out there is normal and don't want to be weird because everybody in the art world is weird, so we want to be normal and weird in combination together,' George explained to Ocula Magazine.
Beards are another subject the duo finds rich in meaning, having explored them in their series 'Beard Pictures' (2016).
'Beards mean all things,' said George. 'You have religious beards, old beards, young people's beards, and all sorts. Beards are quite extraordinary'.
Unseen and forgotten people, too, are important to the artists. These range from forgotten historical figures to the vagrants and tramps they meet on the street. The words 'Crack for sex, Shanara', seen on a bus shelter, inspired the work Shanara (2020).
While their work is in some ways a critique of modern society, Gilbert & George are keen to acknowledge its benefits.
'We're all completely privileged compared with the past,' George said. 'We can read any book, dance to any music.'
'We don't have the vicars controlling us and we don't have a dictator overseeing us, so we're free,' he said.
'We are big fans of democracy,' added Gilbert. 'Democracy and culture is important because culture changes the world, and being democratic, then everybody's part of it. It's fantastic.'
George carries an image of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wherever he goes, the duo's 'sweetheart' fighting for freedom and democracy.
Despite 54 years making art together, having presented hundreds of museum shows around the world, the duo still consider themselves outsiders.
'We have never been insiders,' said Gilbert. 'But we have been in and out, in and out, in and out whenever we want.'
They have steered clear of the art world, avoiding artists, galleries, and museums when they can.
'We don't want to be contaminated by art,' they explained.
Gilbert & George's iconic suits, which have become like a uniform that blurs the line between art and artist, also emerged from this desire to live outside the art world. They began wearing suits when the artists of their generation who alienated the less informed, were scruffy and oddly dressed.
'We never wanted to alienate any section of society,' George explained.
George gleefully shared a grumpy old grandmother's summary of their 2007 show at the Tate Modern.
'Well, I'm not entirely sure of those pictures,' she said, 'but they do dress very nicely.' —[O]
