Gilbert & George in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Gilbert & George: 21ST CENTURY PICTURES highlights the artists’ most compelling work from the past 25 years.

From the illicit to the everyday, their work confronts taboos and challenges societal norms through vivid, large-scale images rooted in their surroundings of the East End of London. This conversation explores the themes of identity, morality and modern life in the pair’s work, and discusses how these ideas continue to shape their vision and enduring motto ‘Art for All’.

Gilbert & George met as students at Central Saint Martin’s in the 1960s, and have created art together exclusively as one artist since 1967. They are both the subject and object of their own art, and have adopted the identity of ‘living sculptures’ in their art and daily lives. Sex, money, race, religion, death, hope, life and fear are recurring themes in their pictures. Their work disregards conceptions of ‘good taste’ and challenges conventions in the art world, and society more broadly.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a renowned curator and Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, as well as Senior Artistic Advisor of The Shed, New York. Prior to this he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He co-curated Gilbert & George’s major retrospective exhibition THE GREAT EXHIBITION and has curated more than 300 exhibitions. Obrist is also a prominent writer and contributing editor to Artforum, AnOther Magazine and 032C. His publications include Ways of Curating, The Age of Earthquakes, and Lives of The Artists, Lives of The Architects.