Gilbert & George: THE MAJOR EXHIBITION

Gilbert & George (born 1943 and 1942, respectively) met as students at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, in 1967. The artists are not only the creators of their art but also the central subject. They are two people but one artist, expressing life with a singular vision—they are the art of Gilbert & George, and their life is art.

Gilbert & George’s art expresses their own array of feelings and thoughts. They draw inspiration from the social fabric and the underlying tensions, restlessness, and contrasts of the modern world we all share—especially that of their own metropolis and that of London’s East End, where they have lived and created art together for over fifty years.

THE MAJOR EXHIBITION has been curated and the installation designed by Gilbert & George, specifically for HAM. It consists pictures from 10 major groups of pictures including NEW DEMOCRATIC PICTURES, NAKED SHIT PICTURES, JACK FREAK PICTURES, SCAPEGOATING PICTURES and UTOPIAN PICTURES. The most represented pictures in this exhibition series are from their most recent THE BEARD PICTURES, which includes the extraordinary triptych OLD BEARD RUIN (2016) of over 20 metres in length. The installation of pictures is neither chronological, nor thematical, rather a powerful and unique composition of art.

With a visionary yet anarchistic seriousness at its core, their pictures confront us with brutal realism intended to provoke, interrogate, disrupt, and inspire. Mixed with the romantic, the archaic meets the contemporary; multicultural traditions, taboos, morality, systems of belief, politics, sexuality, love, violence, poverty, and the global, virtual world. Harmony and conflict are at eternal odds and the fantastical meets the commonplace in this ground-breaking exhibition.

For the artists, it is the walls sprayed with obscenities and filthy London pavements that are disturbing, not nakedness, notions of undressing, or monumental-sized images of bodily excrements. These seemingly contradictions challenge our own emotions concerning human intimacy, self-guilt, and shame that merge with layers of detail, bright colours and imposing compositions. But as they describe, “Imagine showing yourself like this, absolutely naked… Not funny…We are terrified of the world. We’re in the pictures, a constant measure, a constant presence, looking at the world staring at us in the face outside the house.”

Others subjects too, such as the cruciform, push the boundary of the taboos around the world. But Gilbert & Georges’ intent is not offend but rather to de-shock, engaging viewers through contrasts, reversals, paradoxes, or just sheer truth. As the Gilbert & George said in 1996, “WE WANT OUR ART TO: BRING OUT THE BIGOT FROM INSIDE THE LIBERAL AND CONVERSELY TO BRING OUT THE LIBERAL FROM INSIDE THE BIGOT.”

With this their art prompts audiences to ask vital questions and reflect on their own lives and experiences, and that of others. Whilst posing seemingly unanswerable questions they also encourage visitors to contemplate on the experience of looking at art itself. Gilbert & Georges’ maxim is ‘Art For All’, as they reject an elite view of art, preferring their art to gain relevance to the lives of non-art world citizens.

THE MAJOR EXHIBITION is Gilbert & George’s first significant exhibition held in the Nordic countries during the last two decades and showcases pictures exhibited for the first time in Finland.

The exhibition is curated by Gilbert & George and Claire Gould from HAM.