Mr Gilbert & George
Doctor of the University (HonDUniv)
Year conferred: 2011
Gilbert & George have worked exclusively together since they met at St Martin’s School of Art in 1967.
George is a Brookes alumnus, having studied at the Oxford School of Art in the mid sixties, while Italian-born Gilbert studied in Austria and Germany before coming to the UK.
They are probably best known for their large scale photo-montages, frequently tinted in bright colours, backlit and overlaid with black grids to resemble stained glass windows.
They won the Turner Prize in 1986, and in 2005 were the British representatives at the Venice Biennale. Two years’ later, their retrospective at Tate Modern was the largest of any artist to have taken place at the London gallery.
