Paperjam

Gilbert and George at Tate Modern

Art // Jim // 4th March 2007

There’s a pub called The Centre Page near the millennium bridge, its not bad but there are a few unseasonable flies buzzing about the place and the food is a bit more deep fried than I recall from previous visits. Still on the bright side they can’t add up, so the bill is a bit lighter than it should have been.

Over the bridge to the Tate Modern and quickly grab some tickets for the Gilbert and George exhibition, while people stream out of the big slides which I still haven’t got round to having a go on.

I’ve seen a couple of Gilbert and George things before and I am definitely intrigued by their whole act of making themselves "living art". Plus they seem a touch odd and mysterious, which is always good.

I’m looking forward to seeing how they have maintained themselves as living pieces of art over their decades of partnership, to get an insight into how they have developed their idiosyncratic style and see whether work that was considered so shocking years ago still has the same power over the viewer.

Claire, on the other hand, is looking forward to “seeing all the penises”.

The exhibition takes up the whole fourth floor, including the landing, where there is a brilliant photo collage thing of G & G getting pissed, the pictures shaped and arranged into the outline of a martini glass. Also in the foyer are the pictures about the recent bombings, collections of newspaper adverts arranged around the two morphed forms in the matching three-button suits.

The start of the exhibition shows some charcoal drawings featuring G&G in various scenes such as walking through the country or in the pub. I am quite taken with the pub one and try to explain that it really captures the sense of being a bit drunk in an old style pub, oh dear I’m sounding like a wanker already.

Looks like charcoal was quickly abandoned and G & G (who trained as sculptors) got rapidly into taking photos of themselves, their locales plus other bits and pieces, all arranged in strangely symmetrical patterns. This stuff is really good all seemingly about isolation and drinking. By the time they start colouring some of the photos red, the images start to have a strangely fascistic thing going on, I can’t really explain why. Maybe it’s the swastika motif?

Time to have a quick discussion about how exactly you would get your spunk to land in such a controlled manner as some of the photos display, I’m concerned that I wouldn’t have the concentration to achieve such results at the moment of truth. Well, I've got a quiet weekend coming up, so that's something to do.

Someone quietly tuts behind me, which demonstrates an interesting point. For the Tate cognoscenti, it is ok to scratch you chin and study artwork involving shit, spunk, piss and graffiti of badly drawn cocks. However if someone, say an unshaved man in a khaki shirt, were to discuss said subjects above a whisper with someone who has definitely not bunked off work, then disapproving scorn is the order of the day. Strange. Reminds me of the old ladies at the Saatchi gallery looking at the Chapman brothers mutant children.

After the rather angry Dirty Words Pictures, the exhibition settles into what I guess in G & G’s signature style; large scale, colourful grids made up of composite photos almost always including the two of them in increasingly iconic and ritualistic guises. Claire says that the grids are supposed to resemble stained glass windows and there is definitely a drift towards religious and pseudo religious imagery in a lot of the pictures.

A lot of the pictures from the eighties include teenage boys and skinhead types, occasionally with G & G appearing a bit creepily in the background. Also there are some strange cartoon type images, typical amongst these is Sperm Eaters where two figures sort of auto fellate. The worrying thing here is that the cartoony yellow colour used is heavily reminding me of The Simpsons, Claire dubs it “Itchy and Scratchy porn”, which is as good a description as I think we are going to get.

Suddenly I remember that I read that Martin Clunes posed for them as a young man, we locate him on the left hand side of a piece called World. Hasn’t changed much really has he? Have to admit that I’m not a massive fan of his recent TV work, all a bit boring isn’t it?

This is a big old exhibition and there is the chance for a break half way round, I half-heartedly sip at a 7-up and we glance around at the AIDS themed stuff decorating the espresso bar.

Through to the second half of the exhibition and we are straight into more of the same but bigger, more colourful and with the introduction of quite a lot of shit. Big blown up turds (presumably the prior property of G & G, or do they employ a stunt arse?) adorn a load of the ambiguously titled Naked Shit Pictures. Rather like the spunk earlier I am quietly impressed with the neatness and uniform nature of the lumps of poo on display. I wonder if they conscientiously avoid a night on the lager with a curry to finish in order to produce such aesthetically pleasing ordure? High-fibre art?

Gilbert and George: Naked, shit

Bodily fluid wrangling issues aside the Naked Shit Pictures are really the centre piece of this exhibition; A culmination of the photo composite technique and the recurring themes of religion, nakedness, rude words and spunk. Plus the focus on the artists reaches new levels as they stare demonically at the viewer past their own dangling scrotums.

It sounds like it should be intimidating, offensive, or maybe even sexual, but it isn’t at all. The pictures are really involving and epic but with so many of them all together it all sort of blends into one, possibly removing the shock of seeing a piece like Our Spunk (featuring two middle aged men holding their arses open against a background of their own semen) on its own in more mundane settings.

The work is getting bigger and more technically complicated as we make our way round the subsequent rooms, but I have to say it is getting a bit too much. The massive collection of escort contact ads (Named) just bores me shitless really and the increasingly cartoonish nature of the images of G & G isn’t as convincing as the earlier more photographic stuff. The later rooms contain directly satirical assaults on homophobia and media hysteria, all very admirable, but just not as interesting as the totally mad near abstract stuff earlier. The increased use of computers rather than laborious photographic techniques seems to remove a certain charm from proceedings and makes the work seem a little more impersonal and less unique.

There are some half-hearted injections (ho ho) of semen here and there, but it is all a bit tired, more like a sad, functional wank at three in the morning that leaves you feeling even more lonely rather than a chirpy one in the shower in the morning to get the day going.

We really dash through the last few rooms and go to have a quick stroll through some of the new Tate exhibits including the ace sliding doors things, where all photographic activities are vetoed. Go up to the bar at the top of the gallery and watch across the Thames as the lights go on in London, it’s a fantastic view.

Seem to agree that it is quite strange that over forty odd years that G & G don’t really seem to have moved their act on at all. Of course that could just betray a massive lack of understanding on our part and an underestimation of the discipline involved in maintaining the same iconic image and persona for all that time.In laymans terms: the Gilbert and George exhibition has got some great stuff in it but, being honest, it gets a bit fucking samey by the end. Put that on the poster.

All London lies before us, a treasure trove of myriad possibilities for the evening ahead. So that’ll be a night in the pub then? Yeah go on. If it ain’t broke etc etc.

Links...

Gilbert and George at Tate Modern

Exensive info on the exhibition, includes some really good videos

G & G entry on Wikipedia

"Assumed to be lovers" it says here. They're gay? Fucking hell. I didn't pick that up at all.