Viewing Gilbert & George: New Normal Pictures

For more than 50 years, the dapper-suited artistic double act Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore) have tackled thorny issues ranging from life and death to fear, sex and religion, in their multi-disciplinary work.

In lockdown they completed a new series of tragicomic photoworks, The New Normal Pictures, using images taken just before the pandemic. Twenty-six of these are currently installed in a new show at White Cube Mason’s Yard. Described by the artists as ‘celebratory, crazed and super-modern’, they deal with all of the subjects ‘that lie inside everyone wherever they are on the planet,’ explains George. ‘They deal with the past, present and the future.’

They show the artists looking dazed and flattened — even suffering — against chaotic London cityscapes: litter, railings, drug bags, shovels and old trinkets found on their walks through the capital their only companions. These brightly coloured works are grotesque and haunting yet utterly absorbing — and paint a disquieting portrait of these disorientating times.