Gilbert & George

England is a large, wall work consisting of thirty photographic panels mounted in abutting narrow black metal frames. The artists took photographs of a wild English rose and its leaves and coloured the photographs red and green respectively. The photograph of the rose, spread across two red panels, is central to the work. A cluster of three leaves is spread across four green panels above and below the rose. Black and white photographs of the artists standing in confrontational poses, their feet wide apart and their hands balled into fists, fill six panels on either side of the rose. They are making ‘a physical salute’ to England, one which involves ‘all the physique, not just an arm’ (quoted in The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, p.99). Gilbert and George photographed each other against a white wall. The bottom of their legs and their feet disappear into the dark floor, which provides a kind of sculptural base for their figures. Above each black and white standing figure is a crouching, grimacing red and black figure. The image of Gilbert is placed above George and that of George above Gilbert in the compositional balancing typical to the artists’ multi-panelled photo-works of the 1970s. Gilbert, on one side, screws up his eyes and has his thumbs in his ears and his fingers sticking up above his head. George on the other side opens his eyesngland is a large, wall work consisting of thirty photographic panels mounted in abutting narrow black metal frames. The artists took photographs of a wild English rose and its leaves and coloured the photographs red and green respectively. The photograph of the rose, spread across two red panels, is central to the work. A cluster of three leaves is spread across four green panels above and below the rose. Black and white photographs of the artists standing in confrontational poses, their feet wide apart and their hands balled into fists, fill six panels on either side of the rose. They are making ‘a physical salute’ to England, one which involves ‘all the physique, not just an arm’ (quoted in The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, p.99). Gilbert and George photographed each other against a white wall. The bottom of their legs and their feet disappear into the dark floor, which provides a kind of sculptural base for their figures. Above each black and white standing figure is a crouching, grimacing red and black figure. The image of Gilbert is placed above George and that of George above Gilbert in the compositional balancing typical to the artists’ multi-panelled photo-works of the 1970s. Gilbert, on one side, screws up his eyes and has his thumbs in his ears and his fingers sticking up above his head. George on the other side opens his eyes wide behind his glasses, sticks out his tongue and points towards his face. The artists transformed their childish gestures of mockery and rebellion into caricatured horror by lighting themselves from below and colouring the images red. Positioned above the proud patriots, the red artist-gargoyles seem to evoke their sinister alter-egos. - From the Tate website 

 In 1984 George explained:

We use colour in different ways. At first we used red and then we used red and yellow. Now we use more colours, but in each picture they mean something different. It depends on how we put them to work. They can be symbolic or they can be atmospheric or emotional. You can say red is like love, or it is like blood, or danger, or fire. It’s used in different ways, not in a simplistic way. It’s more a part of our own language, really – part of our vocabulary.