Gilbert and George are busy in the studio, working on a new set of pictures. I asked the two artists—who are both now in their early eighties and have spent almost six decades working together—a few probing questions. Firstly, might they give us a clue about these upcoming works? “Our new pictures, the ‘SCREW PICTURES’,” they explained, “are about the joys and difficulties faced daily by us and the rest of you. They include images of screws, nuts, bolts, twigs, and us. We’ll leave everything else to your imagination…”

I was glad to hear that we’ll soon be treated to another dose of Gilbert and George’s “shitty naked human world” (from a 1994 series), but disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to visit their east London house for a coffee. (They famously do not cook at home, their kitchen stocked only with the means of making a cup of instant Nescafé.) As our interview was conducted elsewhere, I decided to spend an afternoon loitering around their neighbourhood instead. The artists have lived and worked in the same Spitalfields abode—a sprawling Huguenot townhouse—since the late 1960s. Their early artworks were signed off with the slogan “Art for All”, followed by the address and phone number, “12 Fournier St, London E.1 Tel 247 0161”. In a 2006 documentary for BBC’s Imagine, George pointed out that “it’s still the same number to this day”, as if daring the viewers to pick up the phone and give them a bell.

On the trail of Gilbert and George, I started my adventure with a slap-up lunch at Sizzles, an old-fashioned caff where the pair are known to pick up breakfast. My fry-up was delicious, and the cafe is a welcome throwback to the old East End, before it became gentrified. Gilbert Prousch (born 1943) and George Passmore (born 1942) set up home here in the late 60s, shortly after meeting as students at Saint Martin’s School of Art. Back then, this poverty-stricken postcode was still strewn with cabbage leaves from the old Spitalfields Market, along with Blitz-era bombsites yet to be redeveloped. Throughout these ruins, you’d often find a gang of meth drinkers huddled around a bonfire. The homeless are still a familiar presence in Spitalfields, and have been a recurring subject in Gilbert and George’s art throughout the years: The Alcoholic (1978) shows the two artists gazing down on a sleeping vagrant like a pair of solemn guardian angels.

In the duo’s earlier breakout piece, The Singing Sculpture (1969), they took on the persona of the down-and-out, performing a rendition of an old depression-era music hall song by Flanagan and Allen called Underneath the Arches. With their faces painted bronze, they would mount a small makeshift stage and sing along to the record nonstop for hours on end. The performance shot them to art-world stardom, with shows at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York, and a museum tour of Australia. But it was an old black-and-white photograph of one specific rendition that now found me scouring the industrial units on Cable Street, just down the road from the Jack the Ripper Museum. I tried to locate the exact arch but it was tricky as they’ve all been filled in and repurposed as offices and car mechanics. A commemorative blue plaque would have come in handy: “Gilbert the Shit and George the Cunt performed ‘The Singing Sculpture’ under this arch on 26th October 1969.” I am, of course, also referring to another iconic early work from the same year, a “magazine sculpture” where the youthful pair are shown relaxing on the grass, those slurs tacked onto their suits using cut-out letters.

Back in Shoreditch, I wondered how the artists were faring the London heatwave, given that they have continued to wear tailored suits every single day since then: come rain, hail, or extreme shine. They refer to this uniform as their “responsibility suits”. As they explained to me, “Our suits are part of our living sculpture—they are our working clothes, very typical, normal suits, and an important part of our democratic idea. We change tailors every time one dies. Our current tailor is a wonderful Tibetan gentleman!” When you see old photos of them with other people, everyone else looks dated, their style stuck in that specific era. Gilbert and George, however, always appear timeless. A good suit never ages…

I picked up a coffee and found a spot of shade under a tree in the gardens of Christ Church, also known as Itchy Park. Jack London visited here while documenting the poverty of the East End for his 1903 book The People of the Abyss: over a hundred years later and the park doesn’t look all that different. Christ Church still looms menacingly over Fournier Street. It’s the main subject of a piece called Antichrist (appearing as an upside-down reflection in a puddle) from Gilbert and George’s series The 1980 Pictures, a personal favourite of mine. The advent of that decade—which would witness the rise of both Thatcherism and the AIDS epidemic—saw the artists’ colour palette expand from a tabloidesque black, white, and red to include blue, green, orange, and yellow, giving these photo-pieces the feel of a demonic Pride flag. London seems both terrifying and mesmerising in these works, which (along with appearances by the artists themselves) are filled with religious iconography, Union Jacks, war memorials, tramps, doodled monsters, and lots of young East End lads, some clothed, some naked, with the occasional close-up of an asshole or erect penis… My scary art daydream was suddenly interrupted by a stranger wandering towards me. Despite the intense heat, he was wearing a heavy sweater with the hood up, and slowly circled my bench as if looking for something in the grass. I took this as my cue to move on; the woman sitting near me also had the same idea.

An exhibition of The 1980 Pictures today, with some of their very un-PC titles, would inevitably rub certain audiences up the wrong way. Gilbert and George have been doing this for years. They’ve previously complained that art museums these days are “too woke”; this might be one of the reasons they decided to open their own a few years ago. The Gilbert and George Centre is located a stone’s throw from Fournier Street, just off Brick Lane. Set across three floors, the former brewery has been converted into a gallery that exclusively shows their own work. The current exhibition, Our George Crompton, Worlds and Windows by Gilbert & George, pays tribute to a friend of theirs who passed away last year. In a work called Number Twelve, Crompton appears twice, like a pair of identical twins. He sits at the open door to 12 Fournier Street, but also in front of himself on the pavement, flanked either side by Gilbert and George. “He would come to visit us every day,” they explained, “bringing the newspapers—sometimes walking all the way from his hostel, St Mungo’s, in north London. He was a homeless person, and homeless people tend not to end up in a picture. He didn’t have any mean or unpleasant thoughts that we remember, ever. When we told him, ‘George, you’re in the picture’, he was very casual about it. It is a tribute to George and similarly to disenfranchised young people. There are lots of Georges out there.” 

The other two floors are filled with their “postcard sculptures”, where the artists had bulk-collected hundreds of postcards and rearranged them in repeated, mosaic-like formulations. In one series from 2009, the cards are assembled to look like a urethra symbol; some feature the calling cards left by sex workers in phone boxes (“Massage to Women and Couples. Home and Hotel Visits. Escort Services Available. 07944127157”); others had more traditional images of Big Ben and Tower Bridge, the cherished souvenirs of a British holiday. It left me wondering what a series of Gilbert and George pictures set somewhere abroad might have looked like. The Benidorm Pictures perhaps, G&G floating in a swimming pool, surrounded by British lads on a stag weekend. This will never happen, though: London E1 is their sole domain and it always will be. I asked them if there was a boundary to the area featured in their work, a Gilbert and George square mile as it were. “In Spitalfields and around Liverpool Street, we feel we’re at the centre of the modern universe!” they replied. “This human world is our oyster…”

This isn’t to say that they don’t occasionally treat themselves to a holiday. A video room at the centre was screening a trilogy of short films by Iain B MacDonald, which show the artists doing three versions of the same day trip to Southend-on-Sea: one filmed in 1992, the next in 2021, with the most recent version from 2025. We see them walking along the promenade and slurping on oysters from a shellfish shack. “We had a really wonderful day,” says Gilbert. “We are very pleased, very happy, and very disturbed,” adds George.

I asked them for some local Spitalfields recommendations. “There are many places of worship,” came the reply (they sometimes answer as a pair), “and the Golden Heart pub. If you’re peckish, head to Meraz on Hanbury Street for biriyani—we’ve been going there since the 1970s.” Biriyani did sound tempting, but I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Gilbert and George themselves at dinner—a perfect finale to my day out. It’s a well-known legendary fact that they dine religiously, every single evening, at Mangal 1, a Turkish restaurant just off Kingsland Road. I arrived, tired and hungry from my long walk, the smell of sizzling meats making my mouth water. Just as the waiter led me through to the restaurant’s second dining room, I clocked them, perched at their usual table, this evening’s responsibility suits a light shade of green. But I didn’t dare go over to say hello: after a hard day in the studio, toiling away at their Screw Pictures, the living sculptures deserved to dine in peace.

‘Our George Crompton, WORLDS and WINDOWS by Gilbert & George’ is open now at the Gilbert & George Centre