‘Sandra brings us sausages every day’ … Gilbert & George (George, left) pose at the preview of Our George Crompton, Worlds and Windows. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA View image in fullscreen ‘Sandra brings us sausages every day’ … Gilbert & George (George, left) pose at the preview of Our George Crompton, Worlds and Windows. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA Art and design Interview ‘You learn how to be idiotic artists’: Gilbert & George on fame, rebellion and their mystery new collaborator Rich Pelley The Britart mavericks have now teamed up with an unlikely artist. Is their odd throuple an elaborate prank – or are the duo passing down their legacy?
Thu 18 Jun 2026 09.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google ‘H ello girls,” greets 82-year-old Gilbert Prousch, one half of art duo Gilbert & George, as he shakes my hand when I arrive at his house with a very important guest in tow. He kisses his other guest on the cheek. Gilbert is Italian after all.
“This way,” he says, ushering us into the four-storey, 18th-century Georgian townhouse in Fournier Street, Spitalfields, east London, where he and the other half of his duo, George Passmore, 84, have lived since the late 1960s. Back then, they rented the ground floor for £16 a month. Now, they own the whole house. I bet it costs a bit more now.
I sneak a peek through a door at one of many living rooms crowded with antiques. As I walk further into the house, something feels odd. I realise that there’s no kitchen. Then I remember: Gilbert & George famously have no kitchen. They have long regarded cooking as time wasted when they could be making art – they balk at the idea that the “average housewife spends 27 years in the kitchen”, as they put it – and so eat out or have food brought in every day (more on their favourite haunts later).
We cross the courtyard into an impossibly warm studio to find George, dressed in a brown Irish tweed suit to complement Prousch’s green. The pair switched from Scottish to Irish tweed in 2014 to mark their disapproval of the Scottish independence referendum. Together in their colourful suits, they are unmistakably the Gilbert & George I’ve come to recognise: part artist duo, part double act known for being deadpan, mischievous and defiantly unchanged. The contrast is the point: here are two polite gentlemen in beautiful tailoring, whose art has for decades revelled in sex, bodily fluids, swear words, religion, death, urban grime and (ahem) schoolboy smut.
View image in fullscreen Endless’s Crotch Grab, made for the Guardian. Illustration: Endless/the Guardian We sit at the long studio table, which is crowded with works in progress: medicine from the chemist, newspapers (George is reading today’s Telegraph) and cured meat.
“What have you two been doing? Eating sausages?” asks the guest, taking the mick.
“Yes. Sandra brings them in every day,” says George.
Which Sandra he’s talking about is unclear. It could be Sandra, the waitress at the Golden Grill, the local cafe where they used to eat daily as part of their “Living Sculpture” philosophy, which stipulated that even their daily routines became a work of art. But the Golden Grill closed years ago, and I’m not sure there’s a Sandra at their current favourite, east London’s Mangal 1 Turkish grill. Or it might be Sandra Esqulant, landlady of the nearby Golden Heart pub, who has looked after them for decades. Or perhaps everyone who feeds them just becomes a Sandra. At least I recognise the other recent visitor they m…