Celebrating a year of The Gilbert & George Centre in London, the second exhibition to take place will present 28 ‘LONDON PICTURES’. The largest group of pictures created by Gilbert & George, the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ offers both a directory of urban human behaviour and a moral portrait of our times. Brutal and declamatory, these brooding and disquieting pictures have been created from the sorting and classification by subject of 3,712 newspaper posters, stolen by Gilbert & George over a number of years. In their lucidity, no less than their insight into the daily realities of metropolitan life, the ‘LONDON PICTURES are Dickensian in scope and ultra-modern in sensibility.
More than a decade since they were first unveiled on a global tour, viewing the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ in 2024 will prompt visitors to consider how society has changed and what has remained central to our shared experience.
“From the actuality of these news placards, brutal, blunt, absurd, there resonates a vision of the city as Gilbert & George have known and traversed it, drawing from its energy, dreams and trauma as though from a palate of human feeling, recognised and employed since the beginnings of their art.
The ‘LONDON PICTURES’ derive a great part of their impact and intensity from the directness and unchanged immediacy of the newspaper posters within all but one panel of each picture. In each remaining panel can be found a different image of HM Queen Elizabeth II, taken from coins, her countenance and profile changing with age, dented and worn through the usage of currency. The words ‘IT’S WRITTEN ALL OVER THEM’, beneath the legend ‘A LONDON PICTURE’, propose that these newspaper placards cannot help but reveal what society has become.
The ‘LONDON PICTURES’ seem to comprise a great visual novel, revealing without judgement the ceaseless relay of urban drama, in all its gradations of hope and suffering.”
Learn more on the Gilbert & George Centre website.