George Passmore born 8 January 1942George Passmore is an English artist and is the George in Gilbert and George.
George was born in Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and first studied art at the Dartington Hall College of Art and the Oxford School of Art, then part of the Oxford College of Technology.
George first met Gilbert Proesch on 25th September 1967 while studying sculpture at St Martins School of Art, London. The two claim they came together because George was the only person who could understand Gilbert's rather poor spoken English. In a 2002 interview with the Daily Telegraph they said of their meeting: 'it was love at first sight'. (Telegraph, 2002.05.28). It is widely assumed that Gilbert & George are lovers, although they always dismiss questions about their sex lives.
They were initially known as performance artists. While still students they made The Singing Sculpture (1970), for which they covered themselves in gold metallic paint, stood on a table, and mimed to a recording of Flanagan and Allen's song Underneath the Arches, sometimes for hours at a time.A number of works from the early 1970s consisted of the two of them getting drunk, usually on gin. Smashed (1973) was a set of photographs documenting a drunken evening, while Gordon's Makes Us Drunk is a film of the pair drinking Gordon's gin and listening to Elgar and Grieg, occasionally saying 'Gordon's makes us very drunk' or a slight variant thereof. This work, in common with many others by Gilbert and George, is executed in a completely deadpan way.
The matching business suits which they wore for these performances became a sort of uniform for them, and they rarely appear in public unless wearing them. It is also virtually unheard of for one of the pair to be seen without the other. They refuse to disassociate their performances from their everyday lives, insisting that everything they do is art. The pair regard themselves as 'living sculptures'.
The pair are perhaps best known for their large scale photo-montages, such as Cosmological Pictures (1993), frequently tinted in extremely bright colours, backlit, and overlaid with black grids so as to resemble stained glass windows. Gilbert & George themselves often feature in these works, along with flowers and youths, their friends, and echoes of Christian symbolism. The early works in this style were in black and white, with red and yellow touches in later series. Later these works moved to use a range of bold colours. Their 2005 work, Sonofagod, has returned to a more sombre and darker palette.Some series of their pictures have attracted media attention through including potentially shocking imagery, including nudity, depictions of sexual acts, and bodily fluids, such as faeces, urine and semen. The titling of their series, such as 'Naked Shit Pictures' (1995), has also contributed to media attention. In 1986 Gilbert and George attracted criticism from left-wing commentators for a series of works seemingly glamorising 'rough types' of London's East End such as skinheads, while a picture of an Asian man bore the derogatory title 'Paki'.
For many years they have been residents of Fournier Street, Spitalfields, East London.
They won the Turner Prize in 1986, and represented the UK at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Their 2007 retrospective at Tate Modern was the largest of any artist held at the gallery.
In December 2008 Gilbert & George were awarded an Honorary Doctorate by London Metropolitan University. In October 2010, Gilbert & George were awarded the honorary title 'Magister Artium Gandensis' by University College Ghent. In November 2010 Gilbert & George were conferred with Honorary Doctorates by the University of East London