![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Hoxton-Square/2012/Gilbert-and-George/26054-high-res.jpg?w=960&h=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708354662&s=6d5b9122ab3ab1c1235b2fbfed3f96dd 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Hoxton-Square/2012/Gilbert-and-George/26054-high-res.jpg?w=1280&h=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708354662&s=89d17d243214204b21144f407bea57c2 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Hoxton-Square/2012/Gilbert-and-George/26054-high-res.jpg?w=1600&h=1200&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708354662&s=4d344683b30e13a11bd259a3e3ea2990 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Hoxton-Square/2012/Gilbert-and-George/26054-high-res.jpg?w=2360&h=1770&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708354662&s=75e6ee4bc79e02b6141f33cda8a5152c 2360w)
LONDON PICTURES
Gilbert & George
LONDON PICTURES
9 March – 14 April 2012
'Drawing directly on the quotidian life of a vast city, the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ allow contemporary society to recount itself in its own language.'
This monumental body of 292 pictures is the largest series yet created by the artists. 72 works were exhibited across the galleries in Bermondsey, Hoxton Square and Mason’s Yard. This was the first time that White Cube utilised all three London spaces for a single presentation by an artist and was first UK presentation of this body of work following its premiere in Hong Kong on 2nd March 2012.
For five decades, to international acclaim, Gilbert & George have been making art that is visionary, shocking, relentless, moral and richly atmospheric.
In these ‘LONDON PICTURES’ (2011) Gilbert & George present an epic survey of modern urban life in all its volatility, tragedy, absurdity and routine violence. Brutal and declamatory, these brooding and disquieting pictures have been created from the sorting and classification by subject of nearly 4000 newspaper headline posters, stolen by the artists over a number of years. In their lucidity, no less than their insight into the daily realities of metropolitan life, the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ are Dickensian in scope and ultra-modern in sensibility.
'Drawing directly on the quotidian life of a vast city, the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ allow contemporary society to recount itself in its own language. Within the townscape of this moral audit, Gilbert & George appear to pass like ghosts and seers, alternately watchful and distracted, as though their spirits were haunting the very streets and buildings that these pictures describe. The ‘LONDON PICTURES’ seem to comprise a great visual novel, revealing without judgment the ceaseless relay of urban drama, in all its gradations of hope and suffering.' - Michael Bracewell, 2012
Gilbert was born in the Dolomites, Italy in 1943; George was born in Devon in 1942 and both live and work in London. Together they have participated in many important group and solo exhibitions including 51st International Venice Biennale (2005), Turner Prize (1984) and Carnegie International (1985). They have had extensive solo exhibitions, including Whitechapel Gallery (1971–72), National Gallery, Beijing (1993), Shanghai Art Museum (1993), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1995–96), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1998), Serpentine Gallery, London (2002), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2002), Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2004–05), Tate Modern, London, Haus der Kunst, Munich (both 2007), Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art (both 2008), ‘Jack Freak Pictures’, CAC Malaga, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels (all 2010), Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Kunstmuseum Linz (both 2011) and Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk (2011–12).
A catalogue documenting all 292 of the ‘LONDON PICTURES’ with an essay by Michael Bracewell was published by Hurtwood Press to accompany the exhibition.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Artist-Pages/Thumbnails/Gilbert-George-WOKEN-2020.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1683814161&s=ce941f2815e0c2a7bdefe3fab54cd2f5 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Artist-Pages/Thumbnails/Gilbert-George-WOKEN-2020.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1683814161&s=141f58dab160ff97fd3ea8c9cc8d2781 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Artist-Pages/Thumbnails/Gilbert-George-WOKEN-2020.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1683814161&s=39a65a7c35dab2c3b6c572a2bb1a0ef8 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Artist-Pages/Thumbnails/Gilbert-George-WOKEN-2020.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1683814161&s=8f0e1f0746fc9c9d66443dd952ae1445 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Artist-Pages/Thumbnails/Gilbert-George-WOKEN-2020.jpg?w=1955&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1683814161&s=11aa6e74402a6f72b12ee93286aaed02 1955w)
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