LONDON PICTURES
NOW OPEN!
Celebrating a year since opening, we are thrilled to announce the second exhibition to take place at The Gilbert & George Centre is Gilbert & George’s ‘LONDON PICTURES’ – open from 12 April 2024 for the duration of 2024.
“London is the most important part of our inspiration. It is all that surrounds us. And so we have been able to include all this remarkable surface of thoughts and feeling that we find in these posters…” – Gilbert & George
The largest group of pictures created by Gilbert & George, the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ offers both a directory of urban human behaviour and a moral portrait of our times. Brutal and declamatory, these brooding and disquieting pictures have been created from the sorting and classification by subject of 3,712 newspaper posters, stolen by Gilbert & George over a number of years. In their lucidity, no less than their insight into the daily realities of metropolitan life, the ‘LONDON PICTURES, are Dickensian in scope and ultra-modern in sensibility.
More than a decade since they were first unveiled on a global tour, the Centre presents 28 of the 292 pictures from the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ group – many of which have not been seen in the UK previously. Viewing these ‘LONDON PICTURES’ in 2024 will prompt viewers to consider how society has changed and what has remained central to our shared experience…
The entire group of ‘LONDON PICTURES’ were last on view globally in Athens, Berlin, Brussels, London, Naples, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Salzburg in 2012, and will be open to the public from 12 April 2024 for the duration of 2024.
“From the actuality of these news placards, brutal, blunt, absurd, there resonates a vision of the city as Gilbert & George have known and traversed it, drawing from its energy, dreams and trauma as though from a palate of human feeling, recognised and employed since the beginnings of their art.”
The ‘LONDON PICTURES’ derive a great part of their impact and intensity from the directness and unchanged immediacy of the newspaper posters within all but one panel of each picture. In each remaining panel can be found a different image of HM Queen Elizabeth II, taken from coins, her countenance and profile changing with age, dented and worn through the usage of currency. The words ‘IT’S WRITTEN ALL OVER THEM’, beneath the legend ‘A LONDON PICTURE’, propose that these newspaper placards cannot help but reveal what society has become.
The ‘LONDON PICTURES’ seem to comprise a great visual novel, revealing without judgement the ceaseless relay of urban drama, in all its gradations of hope and suffering.”
Michael Bracewell, 2012
Opening times:
Monday CLOSED
Tuesday CLOSED
Wednesday 11:00 – 18:00
Thursday 11:00 – 18:00
Friday 11:00 – 18:00
Saturday 11:00 – 18:00
Sunday 11:00 – 18:00
Future Events
Information on upcoming events will appear here. You can also check our social media for updates.