Gilbert & George on fame, rebellion and their new collaborator

The pair live in a four-storey Georgian townhouse in Fournier Street that they have occupied since the late 1960s. Their home famously contains no kitchen: cooking, they have long argued, is time wasted when they could be making art, so they eat out or have food brought in.

Dressed in colourful tweed suits, they present a deliberate contrast to the often raw subjects of their work — sex, religion, death and urban grime — and treat daily routine as part of their practice. Their unlikely friendship with the younger street artist Endless grew from a photograph of one of his nearby pieces; a decade on, Endless visits the studio regularly.

He was the first street artist to exhibit at the Uffizi and donated a work that depicts him alongside Gilbert & George in their studio, and his recurring motif, Crotch Grab, caught the duo’s eye. Their correspondence turned into weekly visits and an easy rapport across generations.

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