Gilbert and George

I went out with the Art club again last night. I can't imagine my life without this new discovery of mine, or rather, I'd rather not, social black hole that it is. It was a Late at the Tate night last night. You see, I really can't do late at the Tate with any of my friends, just the mere mention of going to an art gallery on Friday night would have them looking at me like I belong to the Weller Wing of Bedford Hospital. I was all prepped up for the night, I even bought my train tickets from Bedford in advance. And despite a cold which started up a couple of days ago, I caught the 5.51 fast train which got into St. Pancras at 6.30, at which point I emerged from the station dismayed to find that it was raining in London, and I was umbrellaless, and sporting long flared jeans and pink non-waterproof suede shoes. To my surprise it still took me over half an hour to get to the Tate, briskly walking over the Millennium Bridge from St Paul's as the thin rain drizzled from above. The sky was a tumultous blue purple, and the Thames a mettallic shade of mauve. St Paul's stood white, regal and silent in the London night, and from miles away its lit up dome can be seen amongst the modern spacey buildings which have sprouted up and crowded around it, a signature reminder of London's architectural past. The view of the London skyline from over the Thames at night is definitively iconic and is one of my absolute favourites, it rocks me every single time.
When I got to the Tate at 7.15, the Grand Hall was dimly lit, possibly because it's normally lit by daylight, but it just made its central display, the three Unilever series slides, look, well, really cool, actually. The atmosphere was buzzing, and it was nice to not have throngs of people milling around gettin' in the way. The Gilbert and George ticket was a whopping £10, another thing my friends would never do, and off I went. The first Gilbert and George thing I'd ever seen before this exhibit was the short film projection of the two of them, standing one behind the other amongst foliage in Victorian like suits staring motionless into some view off camera against a backdrop of Charlie Chaplin piano music. That was also at the Tate Modern, and not really realising who they were this time, their distinctive images came back to me when confronted by their art work. Which always has the two of them in it, which is their thing; and I have to admit they've pulled it off really well. I suppose I'm fairly open to artists self portraying themselves in their artwork, I love Frida Kahlo. And then ofcourse there's Alfred Hitchcock and M.Night Shyamalan - although not quite the same context.
The exhibit took us through their work starting from their beginnings, fairly innocuously with large pencil and paper drawings, of the two of them in quaint English settings, pubs and such. Then they moved onto photography and colours, then became a bit more controversial by portraying photos of graffiti of words such as 'cunt' and 'fuck'. Then kind of half way through the exhibit you could kind of see where they'd lost the plot and had huge wall height photo art with technicoloured pictures of spit and poo and stuff. And they also shed their hairy suits and posed in various risque positions in a nude, with their dwindling penises and testicles on show. And whereas before their gayness was only a kind of subtle undercurrent, it was now patently obvious that they are flaming queers. I commented on this then, and James stated that they were in fact well known man and man; it seemed that these pictures could have been an expression of the fact that they wanted to ram that fact down our throats. Possibly. It was not easy viewing and left my stomach queasy.
Then their art quietened down a notch, with only occassional references to pictures of spunk, the suits came back on, thankfully, but now their aging had come to the forfront. For the first time I wondered which one was Gilbert and which one was George, a question I asked a couple of other Artclubber, to find that they did not know either. Perhaps this was also their intention, a dual brand, inseperable to the end, not knowing where one began and the other ended. A real love. I couldn't get over how much the non-bespectacled one had aged, he had started off being the more strapping of the two, but was now grayer, podgier, and shorter than the other, who seems to have managed to look exactly the same all this time.
It ended with the art work becoming more involved with computer managed manipulation, and the grand finale of Evening Standard titles all revolving around the terrorist attacks last year, which brought it all up to date. So despite the really dubious section in the middle, it was pretty good, but only recommended if you appreciate that kind of art. Their dual image is definitely striking.
It was a good evening, I was surprised when I got to the end of it and it was nearly 9pm. James gathered everybody up to go out for a drink, most probably at the lovely Youngs pub by the river; but even though my nose had dried up and behaved itself, I didn't want to risk sabotaging a quick recovery by staying out late and went home.