Gilbert & George
Gilbert & George are known for both their eclectic practice and their carefully crafted personas. Partners in life and in art, the two only ever appear together in public while wearing matching tweed suits. Gilbert & George met as students at the Saint Martins School of Art. They found fame in 1969 with The Singing Sculpture, for which they sang “Underneath the Arches” while wearing metallic face paint. Their practice has expanded to include drawing, film, mail art, photographic pictures, and digital prints reminiscent of stained glass. The pair often include elements of self-portraiture and appropriated mass-media images as they thematize gender, sexuality, religion, and mortality throughout their alternately whimsical and obscene works. Gilbert & George have enjoyed major solo shows at the Kunsthalle Zürich, Moderna Museet, Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum, among other institutions. They represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2005. In 1986, Gilbert and George won the prestigious Turner Prize. Their work has sold for seven figures at auction.