Gilbert & George: Field Notes
Living Sculptures opened The Gilbert & George Centre in early 2023. David Congram tried to interview them – and failed. He stalked them instead.
Image credit: Gilbert & George, CURL, 2019, mixed media, 151 × 190 cm.© Gilbert & George. Courtesy The Gilbert & George Centre
Gilbert & George won’t return my phone calls. Rude.
At first, it all seemed so promising. This magazine’s editor introduced me to their gallerist; their gallerist introduced me to their press manager; their press manager enthusiastically accepted an invitation for an interview – and all within the vertiginously berserk economy of a single morning. It quickly devolved, however, into postponement, then disintegrated finally into an oddly civil cold shoulder. How did these once auspicious beginnings take such a humiliating turn?
I was reduced to stalking two little queer old men.
To be fair, I only did it for 48 hours. (To be frank, I kept chickening out.) Thusly, this rather dawdling hunt through the pigpen alleys of East London dragged on longer than it admittedly needed.
An opportunity presented itself on the first evening, dinnertime, when Gilbert & George alighted at the doorstep of Mangal II Ocakbasi Restaurant, 4 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston. This meant the rumours were true. They are creatures of habit (or, perhaps, just inveterate recidivists – jury’s out). Upon hearing they dined here each night, I dared not believe it. It seemed some drivel mythology as overblown as the nonsense custom of printing 02072470161, their real telephone number, on an outside corner of their works, some of which are on permanent display only a few Tube stops away in the Tate Modern. (This insanity also turns out to be true, by the ... Subscribe to read this article in full
