Bummed

The word "bummed" in capital letters crowns Gilbert and George’s eponymous monumental installation like a lintel. The rest of the work, structured as an orthogonal grid, has in its centre six photographic portraits of the artists on a red background, flanked on each side by four black and white photographs of armed soldiers in an urban context, as if in the midst of a coup.

This "gate to hell" belongs to the series of Dirty Words Pictures, which have the same composition and transgressive images and language. Here the artist couple put their artistic ego in the conflictual, chaotic social context of the 1970s, embodied by several Rhodesian independence fighters who intervened at the 1977 Notting Hill Carnival in London as the war of independence became increasingly violent.

Bummed was exhibited for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the 2018 group show "Dancing with Myself" at the Punta della Dogana in Venice.