BBC Radio 2 – Steve Wright in the Afternoon – Steve Wright’s Big Guests – 21th of March 2012

Transcript of G&G’s interview with Steve Wright and Tim Smith

 

PART I

STEVE: Gilbert and George are with us today.

GEORGE: Good afternoon.

STEVE: Good afternoon. How are you too?

GILBERT: Good afternoon.

STEVE: Hugely respected British artist Gilbert and George have been making visionary, relentless, moral and atmospheric art for five decades. Now  their new exhibition, “London Pictures”, where they’ve created bruiting and disquieting images using a collection of over 4000 London newspaper headline posters as they inspiration. How would you describe yourselves?

GEORGE: Normal and weird. We don’t believe we should be weird, because all the artists are weird, and we don’t want to be normal, because everybody is normal. We want to be normal and weird at the same time.

STEVE: Is there a middle ground for normal and weird?

GEORGE: No. They just have to be together because then it freezes up our head completely for creating our pictures. We have to have a desert of empty space inside our heads. That’s why we reduce everything in life that we don’t need to do. We don’t do any shopping, we don’t do any… no theatre, no opera, no ballet… no sport.

GILBERT: A lot of people come up to us and take images because they think we are all the weird. And after… when they take the image we say: “Oh! We are G&G!”

STEVE/TIM: Ah! Ah! Ah!

STEVE: Why have you both never compromised? You never compromise in your work and in your private life. What you are is what you are, what you do is what you do. I remember you telling us last time that even being interviewed like this is art.

GEORGE: We believe that it is a sculpture…  Everything we do is part…  Art and life is together, it’s all one confusing emotional experience driven together.

GILBERT: It’s quite extraordinary that we are able to express ourselves being alive through our pictures. And they actually buy them!

TIM: What do you think is the purpose of art? And in particular your art?

GEORGE: We think that we are able to create pictures that change the life of the viewer. So that we think that people who see our exhibitions would be slightly different from the people who don’t see them. So we are very privileged. We are able to go to our studio, any morning we want, and say in our pictures exactly what we want. We don’t have to check with anyone or refer to anyone. What we want to put in that picture is what goes in then. Then we are able to take those pictures around, this time in London, last week in Honk Kong. If we took the message in the pictures out onto the street, we’d be arrested. But, thank goodness, we can get away with it.

GILBERT: Because we do believe our art is a kind of moral art. Because what is good and what is bad is changing every single day. So we want to be part of that. We know that in 1967 the world was totally different towards sexuality, towards marriage, towards how you would behave at a human being, towards religion. Everything is changing every single day and we want to be part of that. Because art is free though.

STEVE: So do you reflect the change?

GILBERT: Part of the change.

STEVE: Well, I understand that.

GEORGE: Artists inform the general public and then politicians have to change to stay in par. Like, for instance, child labour. The law to abolish child labour came long after the novels of Dickens.

STEVE: Yeah.

GEORGE: Dickens had to inform the public and the politicians who would never say: “Oh, let’s abolish the child labour!”, because they had no reason to do that… Only when the desire of the people…

GILBERT: Cracked!

GEORGE: We say that everybody, you, we and us, we are all part of what books our parent did read or did not read. We are part of what music our grandparents did or did not listen to. We are all cultivated people.

TIM: And does it matter if we react differently to your art? If I’m outraged by your art and Steve is amused by it. Does that matter?

GILBERT: No.

GEORGE: No. We believe that we have a viewer friendly art. We are not the artists who say this is what it means and if you don’t get it you are stupid. We think that our art accommodates any particular view, social background or age group. That’s why we have a huge general following out there in the public.

STEVE: What about the excrement on the wall and all of that?

GEORGE: We think that people either giggle or they are outraged by it… showing excrement. But in fact, if you are a manufacturer of sanitary ware you didn’t stand around the lavatory bowl factory giggling…

STEVE: Yeah.

GEORGE: …or you didn’t get shocked every time you’re going to work. It’s normal. Or, if you are in the medical profession, you don’t giggle when you are taking urine sample. Yes. It’s just part of normal life.

GILBERT: We are trying very much to be a human art.

STEVE: So in that case do you strive to be ordinary and normal as opposed to extraordinary? Which you are!

GEORGE: No. I think that’s the balance that we have. At the same time normal and weird.

TIM: Ah! Ah! Ah!

GEORGE: That’s why we deal with all the subject that lay inside everybody in the world.

GEORGE: Death

GILBERT: Hope

GEORGE: Life

GILBERT: Fear

GEORGE: Sex

GILBERT: Money

GEORGE: Race

GILBERT: Religion

STEVE: Oh my goodness.

GEORGE: That’s it!

STEVE: Wow! Fantastic! That was great!

PART II

STEVE: And…  I’m pointing out to Gilbert and George, here, that they live in a very, very trending part of London.

GEORGE: Just off Brick Lane.

STEVE: Just off Brick Lane?

GEORGE: Our stock answer to the young artists. We say…

GILBERT & GEORGE: Never before have we seen so many good looking people.

STEVE: Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

TIM: Have you been to the Hockney exhibition. The latest…

GILBERT: No. We never go to exhibition. You know it’s very funny because in 1969 we decided that we never wanted to go to an exhibition again. And even never go to other people houses.

STEVE: Have you ever been to anyone else’s house, apart from yours?

GEORGE: Not for 35 five years.

STEVE: Really?

GEORGE: We don’t want to be contaminated. We don’t mind restaurants because you can always escape.

GILBERT: And we can talk to the waitress.

GEORGE: But not houses.

STEVE: So if Tim invited you to his house, you know, for a cup of tea after… you would say: “No, we are not gonna break our rule”.

GEORGE: “We are very grateful and very pleased but”, we would say, “I’m sorry but we have to decline that very kind invitation”.

STEVE: Wow, that’s incredible!

GEORGE: You wouldn’t like if we came round anyway.

STEVE: I think most people…  I mean if you said: “Look, have Gilbert and George round for dinner party” most people, certainly London people, would say: “Yeah, absolutely, bring them round!”

GEORGE: Easy. Danger! Danger!

STEVE: Ah! Ah! Ah! Danger, danger.

TIM: And, do people go to your house?

GEORGE: We don’t entertain in the house because we don’t have a kitchen. So, it’s very simple.

GILBERT: We never entertain. We only make coffee.

GILBERT & GEORGE: Instant coffee.

GILBERT: It’s about it.

GEORGE: If somebody comes for lunch we have it out. If somebody comes for breakfast we have it out.

STEVE: Are you guys cocooned or are you totally aware of everything that is going on in the world and have to be?

GILBERT: Yes, we are aware of everything. They send us all this invitation cards…  We have a very good shredder.

STEVE: Ah! Ah! Ah! Dear!

GEORGE: We like the changes that happen around us. We think…  People say… Now…  What do you think…  Now it has changed. It hasn’t changed! It is change-ING, as we speak, all the time. We’ve seen the kosher off licence turned into a Hindi music center. We’ve seen the delicatessen turned into a adult clothing shop. We saw the gens lavatory on Whitechapel turned into a Indian restaurant.

TIM: How do you keep abreast of everything? Do you read newspapers? Watch TV?

STEVE: No they shred them!

TIM: After they’ve read them! Ah! Ah! Ah!

GEORGE: We read the newspaper every single morning of the week. We watch the news in the afternoon because we want to check on the enemies. The world is the enemy of the culture. People much prefer to kill each other than take an interest in sophisticated cultural things.

STEVE: Yeah.

GILBERT: Yeah. After that, Sunday afternoon we always watch what you call B movies.

STEVE: Oh great. Fantastic!

GEORGE: Just to relax.

STEVE: So, you are fully cable up? You‘ve got the satellite TV and everything?

GILBERT: No.

GEORGE: No, no. Very restricted choice. We don’t want a lot of choice.

STEVE: Okay. Now, “London Pictures” by Gilbert and George is currently exhibiting at London White Cube gallery. It’s in Hoxton Square until the 14th of April. What can we see in there?

GILBERT: There are three galleries. Hoxton Square, Mason’s Yard and Bermondsey.

STEVE: Oh!

GILBERT: Bermondsey is the real monster.

GEORGE: Bermondsey is on until the 12th of May.

GILBERT: That’s…

GEORGE: That’s a huge, huge group of pictures.

TIM: These are the big pictures that we’ve seen. They are based on newspaper front pages? Or…

GEORGE: Yes, all the 3712 newspaper posters that we stole for a six years period.

GILBERT: For six years!

GEORGE: So, we became very expert. We never make pictures like this. We never though we’d make pictures like this. And, nobody else in the world did pictures based on 3712 posters.

GILBERT: They are the meeting image of the spirit of us walking, drifting over London in the evening. It’s all darkened… It’s a townscape, quite aggressive in some way, but for us fascinating.

STEVE: And reflects the true London, do you think?

GILBERT: Oh yeah! It’s true, because all the posters are real.

STEVE: Ok. These are all posters?

GEORGE: The actual posters in the little rack at the newsagent.

GILBERT: So we had to steal them.

GEORGE: We had a system. One of us went into distract the shop assistant and then the other one stole the poster.

TIM: Ah! Ah! Ah! Look on Gilbert’s face. You enjoyed doing this!

STEVE: I like that…

TIM: Didn’t you?

GILBERT: Well, it was extraordinary… they are nearly 4000!

TIM: Yeah.

STEVE: That’s incredible!

GEORGE: Most extraordinary, only once we were caught. A rather over enthusiastic young police man came trotting up behind us, just after I stole the poster and even got it into my pocket. He wanted to know what this was all about. I had to think very quick and I said: “Well, In our school…”, establishing myself as a school teacher of some kind,  “…we collect this posters, make a big display in the common room. Because we want to have a debate, with the pupils and the stuff, to say how can we all discourage antisocial behaviour?”.

STEVE: Brilliant.

GEORGE: “To stop all this muggins. We thought we really shouldn’t leave it to the police. We should all be doing something more”. And he said: “Oh sir,  if only more were like you”.

STEVE: That’s great! And indeed there was almost a kind of antisocial behaviour that you were enacting.

GILBERT: Oh yeah!

GEORGE: There are more crimes, of the stealing, than in any of the posters.

STEVE: Wow! “London Pictures” by Gilbert and George, currently exhibiting at London’s White Cube gallery at Hoxton Square, until the 14th of April, and the Bermondsey and Mason’s Yard White Cube galleries until the 12th of May. Did I get that right guys?

GILBERT: Yes.

GEORGE: The entry is free. That’s very important. No one has to pay to go to see the pictures.

STEVE: Gilbert and George! Thank you very much guys. See you next time.

GILBERT: Thank you very much.

GEORGE: Thank you.

GILBERT: Thank you.

STEVE: Our pleasure.