London’s Hayward Gallery will be home to Gilbert & George’s latest exhibition – 21ST CENTURY PICTURES, providing a mind-bending work across two decades.
Two of the most disruptive forces in British art, Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore, known professionally as Gilbert & George, have their own exhibition at The Southbank Centre’s Hayward Art Gallery in London this winter.
The exhibition is a retrospective of different key series from the duo across the past 25 years, featuring works from past shows, such as NEW HORNY PICTURES (2001), THE LONDON PICTURES (2011), THE BEARD PICTURES (2016) and CORPSING PICTURES (2022).
If that’s not enough, 21ST CENTURY PICTURES will debut two new works from their most recent 2025 addition THE SCREW PICTURES, accumulating to over 60 floor-to-ceiling installations that are sure to stir the mind and alter perspective.
Visually, each installation is incredibly striking, using material from everyday surroundings, such as newspaper headlines, road signs, postcards and snippets of overheard conversations to form distorted, hallucinatory, collage-like visuals that stimulate a spectrum of emotions from desire and intrigue to fear and anxiety.
But, on deeper inspection, a revelation emerges of how different profound topics like sex, religion, class, corruption and even death permeate each of their artworks, like a stained glass window into the modern human experience.
The art of Gilbert & George never shies away from complexity or nuance, and this exhibition is no exception. Featuring pieces like Sex, Money, Race, Religion (2016) that pushes its viewers to confront the most complex facets of modern society, and Ages (2001) that features a collection of male escort advertisements sorted by age, each of the pieces encourage intellectual conversation, free from taboo, about some of the most challenging social issues of our time.
In addition, the retrospective nature of 21st Century Pictures allows for the viewers to observe not only how Gilbert & George’s work has developed over 25 years of their practice, but also how the topics and themes that have captured their imagination have changed and morphed throughout this period.
With the rise of technology and ease of access to information, you can see how their perspectives have got bigger, bolder – more heated than ever before.
While their previous work explores the relationship we have as individuals to different parts of our wider society, in their newest work, The Screw Pictures, Gilbert & George turn the conversation inwards, using objects from their own home and the streets they live on to examine and grapple with their own sense of morality, providing a new vision into their innermost complexities.
Their work may be inarguably profound but Gilbert & George covet an emotional response from their viewers. Champions of the idea of “art for all” and breaking down institutional boundaries, their exhibitions encourage attendance regardless of perceived knowledge levels, rejecting the idea that the understanding of art requires a formal education.
The exhibition is open to the public from now until January 11th 2026, and all you need to experience it to the fullest extent are wide eyes and an open mind.
The show will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, with in-depth texts and a brand new interview with the artists.
Homepage image: Metalepsy, 2008. Top inside image: SEX MONEY RACE RELIGION, 2016. Middle top: HETERODOXY, 2005 and middle bottom; Playground 2008. All images courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
