Gilbert & George (B. 1943 & B. 1942)

‘… we found endless possibilities from piss… machine guns… hockey sticks… flowers…’ George, quoted in The Worlds of Gilbert and George: With Portraits of the Artists from 1968 to 1997, London, 1997, p. 300.

Holy Piss, taken from Gilbert & George’s vital The Fundamental Pictures series, emblematises how the East London duo’s work evolved in the mid-1990s. Spread across six photographs, a magnified droplet of microscoped urine creates a beautifully ornate gilt surface against a neutral background. In the right-hand corner, the title, a comical phrase of English slang, is exclaimed like a newspaper headline above the artists’ signature, subverting the content of the work with a humorously British idiom. Having examined themes ranging from the claustrophobia of urban conditions to the ecstasy of spiritual enlightenment, Gilbert & George progressed towards an examination of the physical substances within themselves. Putting bodily fluids such as blood and tears under the microscope and photographing the results, Gilbert & George were able to create an entire visual universe whilst exploring themes relating to the human condition. In an extraordinary discovery, they found a wealth of associative objects and symbols in this microscopic sample, from crucifixes to Celtic jewellery. Here the result of their experiments looks almost like a gilded pebble, a precious object with a network of thorny, delicate arteries. The tongue-in-cheek title of the work reinforces its visual transformation from something societally perceived of as base to something beautiful, a glorification of something repugnant into something sacred.