Gilbert and George’s latest show is a collection of their work spanning the past 25 years. The London skies may be concrete grey but the Hayward Gallery is brimming over with vividly hued, kaleidoscopic, digitalised works. Newspaper media abounds – headlines detailing bombings, murders, miscarriages of justice and elsewhere there are male sex ads, ‘religious’ images, forests of hallucinogenic plants. The artistic duo pop up everywhere in their works, as they have always done, sizing up their oeuvres in their funny men’s suits, their faces expressing boredom, intoxication, puzzlement and confusion. 

Gilbert and Georg have always regarded themselves as chroniclers of their time, and what better way to convey that, by putting yourself in the picture. And the set is London, the melting pot of societal and existential problems.  Gilbert and George are exciting because they are the William Hogarths of now, there to moralise, to critique our world of greed and of unbridled desire, where the weak (us?) are made to feel guilty by figures of authority like the police, religious and political institutions. In this fractious environment, religion offers scant comfort, and quite evidently the passing years have not dampened the artists’ anger towards organised religion.

Akimbo is a strangely beautiful, ethereal work – two monkey gods are being crucified, and in the middle a diminutive Jesus is on the cross ornamented with a Jewish star, menorah and what appears to be an Islamic text. Gilbert and George are blurred figures looking on while unlucky inverted horseshoes dominate the scene as do mischievous-looking green demons. Religion – any religion – is equated with superstition. 

Was Jesus Heterosexual 2005 brims with anger too but it is not directed towards Jesus. We read: “Jesus says forgive yourself” but Gilbert and George love to add defiantly: “God Loves Fucking”. Interestingly, Gilbert and George are made to look like icons. 

Their irreverent humour doesn’t seem to have waned with age, though I do understand if their stance has shocked Christians and other followers of different religious faiths.

And then we get to the crux of the matter – Gilbert and George are octagenarian artists finding it hard to face up to their own mortality – having no religion to fall back on, so to speak. And nowhere is their fear more evident than in Restless. Gilbert and George lie uncomfortably on stone benches which resemble gravestones. As a backdrop we have exotic-looking, hallucinogenic, flaccid-looking plant petals of shocking pink. Maybe a drug-induced oblivion is what they aiming for – and to go together.

It’s an extraordinary piece. This is a fascinating show – never subtle or unfathomable – but deep.

KH

Gilbert & George – 21^st Century Pictures runs until January 11^th 2026 at the Hayward Gallery