A major retrospective opens at the Hayward Gallery, bringing together over sixty monumental works by the renowned British duo Gilbert & George. The exhibition presents large-scale installations created between 2000 and today, offering an immersive journey through twenty-five years of artistic production. Icons of contemporary art, Gilbert & George have developed a radical and instantly recognisable visual language. Describing themselves as “living sculptures,” they have transformed their daily lives into artistic practice, producing photographic collages that tackle universal themes - such as sex, religion, identity, race, violence, inequality, and death - with irony and intensity. Their bold, hyper-saturated images act as distorted mirrors of urban society, particularly that of London, observed with both sharpness and affection. The exhibition features key series such as New Horny Pictures (2001), The London Pictures (2011), The Beard Pictures (2016) and Corpsing Pictures (2022), alongside previously unseen works from the most recent cycle The Screw Pictures, created in 2025. In these new pieces, Gilbert & George reflect on the passage of time, ageing, and domestic intimacy, turning everyday objects - bolts, branches, household tools - into existential metaphors. The exhibition highlights the coherence and evolution of the duo’s visual language, which continues to renew itself without losing strength or distinctiveness. Each work becomes a theatrical tableau charged with tension, where symmetrical compositions, violent colours, and fragmented text combine to produce a direct and unsettling impact. Gilbert & George’s art rejects all elitism: it is made for everyone, as they have always declared with their motto “Art for All.”
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