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Gilbert & George open their own gallery ‘Everything they do is art’

31 March 2023

Gilbert and George Centre, London.

Artists Gilbert & George open their own gallery, saying museums 'are too full up'

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

Interview by Christiane Amanpour, CNN

Famed artist duo Gilbert & George, who describe themselves as two men who are together one artist, have unveiled a new gallery in London dedicated to their work.

The pair — Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore — have been working together for six decades, creating absurdist performance art and image-based works centered on the idea that the artists are 'living sculptures' — and that everything they do is art.

Opening to the public April 1, the Gilbert & George Centre's first show, 'The Paradisical Pictures,' displays a series of hallucinatory large-scale mixed media works that appear like stained-glass and feature religious and nature motifs and self-portraits.

Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour ahead of the launch, Prousch said, 'New museums don't have the space anymore, and it is limited what they can show.'

'We started out with the idea that we wanted to be seen, and the only way to be seen is to build your own little museum... They are too full up with other artists.' (...)

Prousch and Passmore have long been provocative in their works, creating photograms of urine streams, feces, and Catholic iconography, and displaying themselves suitless — a rarity — and bent over in the 1994 self-portrait 'Bum Holes.' (...)

When asked if they considered themselves 'eccentric,' the Passmore replied 'Certainly not. We're normal — normal weird,' adding, 'We don't want to be weird because traditionally all the artists were weird, with sandals and tobacco pipes and things. And we don't want to be normal, because who wants to be like everyone else? But to be weird and normal at the same time is a good balance, we think.'