Gilbert and George use sex workers’ cards in latest works
By ANIMonday, January 3, 2011
LONDON - Gilbert and George, the two UK artists who work together as a collaborative duo, have been collecting sex workers’ cards to use in their latest works at their studio.
Besides the sex adverts, the two have been collecting hundreds of cards, fliers and postcards of tourist sights.
Among the calling cards is a photograph of a male torso with the text: “Was born a girl. Sex changed to male. Half only still girl. Handsome Turkish 21-yr-old.”
The artists have arranged 13 repeated images of it, above, in what they say is a reference to a Victorian clergyman disgraced as a paedophile.
It is among new works that will be unveiled this month at the White Cube Gallery in London, before the exhibition tours museums around the world.
Gilbert and George, the self-styled “living sculptures”, who have created provocative and explicit art with unflinching realism, are among Britain’s foremost artists.
The couple met at St Martins school of art in the 1960s and found recognition as artists by standing on a table, their faces daubed with gold paint, performing Flanagan and Allen’s song Underneath the Arches about tramps sleeping rough.
The exhibition coincides with Prestel’s two-volume Complete Postcard Art of Gilbert and George, designed by the artists themselves. Almost 600 works will be seen for the first time in the publication.
“The artists reveal how that which appears tawdry, commercial, sentimental or base, no less than that which seems elevated, exquisite or enlightened, contributes to the pattern and voice of the modern world,” the Guardian quoted critic Michael Bracewell as writing in an introduction. (ANI)
