15/05/2023
On Sunday evening, there was a chance to revisit a 2007 documentary made by Alan Yentob for BBC-4 on the lives and work of Gilbert and George, a gay male couple who have made contemporary art together since the late sixties. In April 2023 Gilbert & George opened the Gilbert & George Centre in Heneage Street, London E1 to showcase their work in regular exhibitions and to secure their legacy. The couple have been together since 1968 and formally got married in 2008. The Guardian newspaper noted "Perhaps London’s most famous creatures of habit, the days of Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore, now both in their late 70s, are an urban ritual. They are up at dawn handing out mugs of tea to the homeless who shuffle along Brick Lane or sleep on the benches in the graveyard of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church. They have a piece of toast before they get to work". The same article, by Tim Adams says "An abiding theme of their work has been scatalogical derision of the homophobic “thou shalt nots” of religion. “We had a knock on the door recently and it was an elderly vicar,” George says. “A very pleasant gentleman in his 80s. He said, ‘I just wanted to tell you I think your idea of banning all religion is marvellous. It’s what I always tell my congregation: I don’t want them to be religious, I want them to be good.’”
