Gilbert & George open the London art calendar with Philharmonia performance

This autumn, London art events will be dominated by Gilbert & George, the celebrated artistic duo whose provocative vision has shaped contemporary society’s cultural dialogue for over five decades. Their landmark exhibition 21st Century Pictures opens at the Hayward Gallery on October 7th, 2025, but the celebration begins two days earlier with a unique performance at the Royal Festival Hall.

‘21st Century Pictures’: a monumental retrospective

The Hayward Gallery will host Gilbert & George: 21st Century Pictures from October 7th, 2025,  through January 11th, 2026. Bringing together more than 60 large-scale works, the exhibition charts the artists’ creative journey over the past quarter century.

Known for their motto Art for All, Gilbert & George create floor-to-ceiling images that confront the most pressing questions of contemporary society—sex, religion, corruption, class, and mortality. The exhibition revisits iconic series such as New Horny Pictures (2001), The London Pictures (2011), The Beard Pictures (2016), and The Corpsing Pictures (2022), alongside new works created in the 21st century. Each piece uses bold visual language to provoke, unsettle, and invite reflection.

Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall: music meets provocation

On October 5th, 2025, the Philharmonia Orchestra will stage a performance at the Royal Festival Hall to mark the opening of the exhibition. While Gilbert & George have famously claimed that “music is the enemy,” this one-night-only event challenges that idea by pairing symphonic music with the duo’s iconic images.

During the evening, their works will be projected onto the Hall’s giant screen, interwoven with filmed interviews from the artists’ Spitalfields home. The orchestra will explore themes from one of their central works, Sex, Money, Race, Religion. Wagner’s ecstatic score for Tristan and Isolde represents desire, while Dukas’s tale of the greedy apprentice—better known from Disney’s Fantasia—addresses obsession with wealth. Duke Ellington’s symphonic fusion of jazz and spirituals gives voice to race, while Bach and Xenakis offer contrasting approaches to the question of religion.

The programme will also include a selection of songs chosen by Gilbert & George themselves, a rare acknowledgment from the duo who have always distanced themselves from music. The event promises to be both celebratory and confrontational—an encounter between two disciplines that rarely meet on such unapologetic terms.

Gilbert & George’s Vision of Contemporary Society

For over fifty years, Gilbert & George have acted as both participants in and witnesses to the shifting landscape of contemporary society. Their art—grounded in everyday life yet elevated to monumental scale—serves as a form of visual archaeology. Newspaper clippings, street signs, overheard conversations, and urban detritus become part of a vivid tapestry that challenges cultural taboos and exposes the contradictions of modern life.

In our conversation, Gilbert & George reveal how time shapes their vision, how they live as public figures, and why their work remains a humanist pursuit. Read on for a portrait of two artists who never compromise.