3 February
–
23 April 2006
Section
3: Gender, Race and SocietyGilbert and George b.1943, b. 1942
Cunt Scum 1977
© Gilbert and George
In Cunt Scum 1977, one of a series of Dirty Words pictures made in the Jubilee year, obscene graffiti is combined with documentary-style images showing the cityscape, black youths and policemen, evoking racial tensions, street violence and mounting unease within British society at the time. The images included in the work suggest urban alienation and more general issues of surveillance within the city. They hark back to a Surrealist ethnography of the metropolis and yet also parallel documentary forms, used to expose the political reality of Britain in the 1970s.
