Gilbert & George: SCAPEGOATING PICTURES for London, White Cube

In SCAPEGOATING PICTURES for London (White Cube Bermondsey) Gilbert & George return to their most loved territory for contemporary iconography: the East End

Gilbert and George, History

It’s often thought that the artists Gilbert & George are be-suited oddballs who can be put in a comfy basket marked ‘English eccentrics’. But that reading would be to severely underestimate them. For G&G have long been happy to lob visual and verbal grenades into the salons of polite opinion. Ever since the 1970s, when they emerged from St Martin’s School of Art and set up home in the then decrepit and unloved area of Spitalfields, they have delighted in testing the tolerance of the viewer. In the 1980s they became highly controversial and were subject to shrill accusations of being racist and fascist. Using words like ‘Paki’, ‘wanker’ and ‘c*nt’ on their artworks probably didn’t help their case – nor did their 1981 film The World of Gilbert and George, with its observations of the East End’s drunks, skinheads and St George’s flags. Then came the ‘Naked Shit’ pictures which included photographs of their faeces....Yes, Gilbert & George’s work has been on a kind of genteel rollercoaster, and they have survived all the brickbats with non-committal élan. They are chroniclers, not moralists. 

The exhibition

For several years the pair have been with  Jay Jopling ’s  White Cube  gallery and now  White Cube Bermondsey  is to show an exhibition of  60 new pieces , called the ‘ SCAPEGOATING PICTURES ’. With a title taken form an anti-Islamophobia flyer found on   Brick Lane , Scapegoating Pictures calls into question  “a new world where everything is based on blame”.These images, undertaken in Gilbert & George's typical square format photographic form, bring all the   stained-glass   icon-like allusions normally associated with the artist duo together with images of the  East End   where they still live (albeit in an area that has gentrified around them). The duo’s signature (anti)ecclesiastical visions interpret their favoured territory as a microcosmic analogue for the   cultural tensions   of today; unbridled   hedonism   at war with religious orthodoxy through   bomb-like laughing gas canisters ,   bicycles   and   burkas.  "East London is schizophrenic" the duo recounted recently, "everything that is happening in the world is happening in front of our doors."  As ever with G&G, these pictures have a somewhat brutalising effect, and show that these highly original, ever-observational,  artists will continue to seek for the truth in London's gutters.