Side by Side

Side by Side is a unique glimpse into the mercurial world that Gilbert & George construct around themselves. 

A ‘contemporary sculpture novel’, Side by Side functions as a kind of manifesto of their view of life and art. We follow them ‘in the Nature’, in a playful celebration of the Romantic flâneur as they traverse the English countryside. Also, through ‘A Glimpse into the Abstract World’, brief but poetically ornate texts are teamed with hand-drawn, abstracted imagery.

‘The Reality in Our Living’ provides the gritty urban flipside to their earlier bucolic idyll and the black-and-white images flesh out the words of the Flanagan & Allen music hall song ‘Underneath the Arches‘. This was the soundtrack to the celebrated Singing Sculpture that Gilbert & George had first presented in 1969.

Each copy of this beautiful edition a unique art object. The artists created each hand-marbled cover. This book is key to their subsequent pictures, performances and iconography, as well as a testament to their working vision: ‘Stand alone and standing for Art’.

The artists signed and numbered each copy in this edition of 2000.