George Crompton was a daily figure in the world of Gilbert & George, a dear friend of the artists whose presence in the studio would often accompany them as they worked. He was a person experiencing homelessness who lived at a registered care home run by the homelessness charity St Mungo’s. In recent years, he would travel daily from his accommodation in North London to visit Gilbert & George at their Spitalfields home and studio, in East London. Created in 2020 during the global pandemic, CROMPTON STREET and NUMBER TWELVE include images of George Crompton alongside the artists as they traverse the city of London on a moral and visionary journey, documenting life as they encounter an altered city. Appearing twice on the doorstep in the picture NUMBER TWELVE, the artists replicated George Crompton, “to make two Georges, like us”. Last seen in the ‘21^ST CENTURY PICTURES’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London (October 2025 – January 2026), NUMBER TWELVE was being installed the day that George Crompton sadly passed away. Seen together for the first time, CROMPTON STREET and NUMBER TWELVE bear witness to a friendship that endured for more than 30 years and act as a tribute to the man described by Gilbert & George as one of their most discerning critics. “He used to come to the (Gilbert & George) Centre a lot and see the shows, and if you asked him about it, he would give a comment, and that’s the best critic you need.” – Gilbert & George, 2026. CROMPTON STREET is on view for the first time.

The Postcard Art of Gilbert & George can be seen as sketches; ready-made imagery reimagined and arranged in a structure that provided a sense of order to the democratic objects that used to be available at every street corner in the UK’s capital city. Standing at more than two metres high, and following a formula, the kaleidoscopic ‘WORLDS and WINDOWS’ are comprised of three elements: the person, the detail, and the world. Works in the exhibition feature images of Bollywood and Hollywood actors, including Anil Kapoor and Tom Cruise, and images of colourful jewels, monuments, nature, and landscapes. The postcards were collected in India and the UK by the artists, “ubiquitous mirrors of people, things, and places familiar to the widest possible audience” at the time. Rather than featuring the artists themselves, ‘WORLDS and WINDOWS’ were an alternative way for Gilbert & George to express themselves in what Robert Rosenblum (art historian and curator) described as visions of “heaven versus earth”. In the words of Gilbert & George, “They’re so religious that religious people would not like some of them. Right?” Pictures from ‘WORLDS and WINDOWS’ have not been exhibited since 1990 when they were displayed at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, and Robert Miller Gallery, New York.

‘THE URETHRA POSTCARD ART’ is the largest group of pictures created by Gilbert & George, featuring 564 works that were arranged by subject matter into seven distinct groups:

A FLYER POSTCARD PICTURE
FLYER PICTURES
LONDON TELEPHONE BOX CARD PICTURES
PICTURE POSTCARD PICTURES
POSTCARD PICTURES
UNION FLAG FLYER PICTURES
UNION FLAG PICTURE POSTCARD PICTURES

Created in 2009, postcards (collected by the artists over many years and mainly across London) feature in the group, and include images of tourist landmarks alongside images of calling cards found in public telephone boxes. What unites each of the works in this group is the shape that they form – a continuous rectangle of cards, with a single card in its central space to form an angulated version of the sign of the urethra. The inclusion of telephone box cards and flyers indicates that Gilbert & George identified with the individuals who lived outside of a perceived normality in London and seen together in ‘THE URETHRA POSTCARD ART’, they form an encyclopaedia of human feeling. Assembled in a manner likened to automatic writing by the artists, ‘THE URETHRA POSTCARD ART’ of Gilbert & George maps not just a city, but those who inhabit every corner of it.

“It’s a human heart. But as a sculpture.” – Gilbert & George on ‘THE URETHRA POSTCARD ART’, 2026