Exhibition Review: The Urethra Postcard Art of Gilbert & George

Art to be? Tacky postcards make a surprising, yet bewitching medium for Gilbert & George. Photo by Rev Stan (Flickr)

Rating: ****

Urethra Postcard Art might seem like yet another wild and controversial misadventure by art’s infamous duo Gilbert & George.  But despite its dubious-sounding concept it is a great example that behind their bizarre personalities and outspoken libertarianism lies a pair of artists with a great eye for creativity, a strong sense of irony, and a healthy dose of twisted wit.

These new works date back to 2009 when Gilbert & George turned back to using postcards and other commercial images, to create an impressively large collection continuing on from their earlier works with the medium.  The premise of this new collection is simple – take 13 identical postcards, flyers, or phone booth calling cards, and arrange them into an angular depiction of the urethra: a rectangle with a dot in the middle.  The result is something quite kaleidoscopic – the cards create intricate patterns of shapes, colours, and meaning.  But as pretty as these look individually, the works have a sweeping and wonderful agenda across the entire anthology.

As well as the tawdry tourist tat of London’s souvenir shops, Gilbert & George also use flyers for gay saunas, fetish nights, and phone booth cards for gigolos and dominatrixes.  What follows is a coupling of two polar aspects of London – the seedy and sleazy sexual underground, and the happy-clappy tourist demeanour.  The exhibition becomes a mesmerising yet captivating examination of the city.

The intricacies of the works themselves force the viewer to look at London from a markedly different and transformed perspective.  The mostly innocent picture postcards are marred by the overtly dirty and sexual sign of the urethra, whilst the same undercurrent evoked by this symbolism turns the illicit and perverse into something enchanting and profound.

The exhibition itself is just the right size, albeit displaying only a mere fraction of the expansive catalogue.  There’s enough to keep viewers entranced and engaged, and the limited scale also helps the works to get their point across.  The only complaint is that in the lower ground gallery the works are stacked three high, so it’s difficult to appreciate the detail of the works on the top tier.

If you want to see this wonderfully perverse collection, do try to combine it with a visit to the Postcards from Vegas exhibition at the Fine Art Society on New Bond Street, where Rob and Nick Carter take an altogether different, yet inspiring and playful, approach to using postcards as their medium (see our review of the collection).

Overall Gilbert & George offer a witty, tilted, and striking examination of London as a city of the degenerate and the delighted.

‘Urethra Postcard Art of Gilbert & George’ is on display at White Cube Mason’s Yard, 25-26 Mason’s Yard, London, SW1Y 6BU, until 19 February 2011.  Admission is free.  Visit www.whitecube.com for more information.