The Fundamental Gilbert and George
1997
This BAFTA, Royal Television Society Best Arts Film and FIFA Grand Prize award-winning film enters the world of Britain’s most eccentric, celebrated and controversial artistic double act in which life and art are inextricably linked. The film explores their history from their student days at St Martin’s in the late sixties to their early success as living sculptures, their postal art and drinking works to their large scale pictures, following the unique creative process of their Fundamental Pictures depicting their own bodily fluids. We see their daily life at home in Fournier Street, around the East End where they perform unique performances for camera with specially painted faces and in Bologna for a full retrospective of their work.
The film, however much you laughed, was both intriguing and strangely seductive
Thomas Sutcliffe, The Independent
The two free spirits, as Gerald Fox showed in his wonderfully off-beat film, were simply ahead of their time, crashing through stereotypes and overturning taboos..
Christina Odone, The Telegraph
A riveting portrait of this deeply odd couple
Gerald Gilbert, Independent Weekend
Disgust becomes beauty in a truly remarkable celebration of being human
Mike Davies, Birmingham Post
We are given an enthralling tour through the parallel universe Gilbert and George inhabit...Gerald Fox’s film captures the essence of the world’s weirdest art pairing without chipping away at the edifice of the living sculpture
Time Out
Gerald Fox’s film is a memorable success.
Waldemar Janusczczak, The Tate Centenary Issue
