GILBERT & GEORGE TO OPEN THEIR OWN FREE GALLERY
Besuited Art Duo Launch Spitalfields Museum on April Fool’s Day
Everybody’s favourite, besuited art duo, Gilbert and George launch their own museum on April Fool’s Day, around the corner from their London home and studio.
The pair have transformed a former, Spitalfields brewery into the three-storey Gilbert & George Centre, and in keeping with their “art for all” mission, the venue will be completely free .
The grand, emerald iron gates (designed by the pair) will open every Friday to Sunday, for visitors to enjoy three exhibition spaces, a research centre and film room all dedicated to the duo’s art, which they have been making for more than 50 years, since meeting at St Martin’s School of Art.
It will launch with the The Paradisical Pictures exhibition, presenting 25 of their trademark, stained glass window-inspired images, depicting the pair in psychedelic, “heavenly places.” This will coincide with the opening of another exhibition, The Corpsing Pictures, at the White Cube on 29 March.
Best known for their “two people, one artist” process, the Turner Prize-winning artists’ adopted the identity of “living sculptures,” becoming not just creators, but the art itself. And whether naked, suited, surrounded by flowers or their own excrement, the two appear as figures in their own art, which is often hilarious, shocking and moving and deals with taboos, artistic conventions and social issues.
And the East End location of their new museum forms a backdrop to most of their work, from chewing gum stained pavements to urban beauty and horror.
The Gilbert & George Centre will function as part of the pair's charity and they have hopes of it becoming a "leading cultural institution,” adding that “our art is the friendship formed between the viewer and the pictures.”
The Gilbert & George Centre, 5a Heneage Street, London E1 5LJ.
Opens every Friday - Sunday from 1 April. FREE.
Like what you've read? Why not subscribe to our free, monthly newsletter?
Comments