Gilbert & George discuss fame, rebellion and a mystery new collaborator in a new interview

Gilbert Prousch and George “George” Crompton, the British art duo known collectively as Gilbert & George, sat for a new interview published June 18, taking up questions about fame, public attention, and what comes next for their work. The conversation, conducted at Prousch’s home and introduced with the greeting “Hello girls,” begins with the artists describing how their public persona and persistent visibility have shaped their approach to artmaking over decades.

During the interview, the duo discussed the idea of rebellion and how they have, in their words, trained themselves to live with it. They also addressed how audiences interpret their boundary-pushing style, including whether their public-facing gestures are meant to shock or to clarify their intentions through repetition.

A central element of the interview is a new artistic partnership that the duo describes as involving an “unlikely” and “mystery” collaborator. The artists characterize the collaboration in terms that leave key specifics unclear to readers, focusing instead on how the relationship should be understood, and whether it functions as an elaborate prank, a planned extension of their longstanding themes, or a way to pass down their methods.

The interview frames the new arrangement as unusual in both form and expectation. While the duo does not resolve every interpretive question in the published account, the discussion emphasizes that the partnership is being presented to the public with a clear purpose: to test how viewers react to the duo’s established identity and to observe whether familiarity changes what people think they are seeing.

Both artists also return to the idea that their reputation for provocation has its own discipline. Rather than treating fame as a purely external force, they describe it as something that can be learned, managed, and, in their view, absorbed into the work. The implication in the interview is that notoriety itself becomes material, affecting how they stage ideas and how they anticipate public reading of their output.

Published June 18 by The Guardian, the interview does not, in the description available here, provide a fully detailed account of the collaborator’s identity, the precise format of the new project, or a release timeline. Instead, it positions the collaboration as the latest chapter in a long-running strategy: provoke attention, invite confusion, and then insist the audience sit with the questions long enough to see structure.

For readers and followers of Gilbert & George’s practice, the immediate next step is to watch for further disclosure about the collaborator and the circumstances of the new partnership, including how the work is exhibited, credited, and documented. Until those details are confirmed in additional coverage or official listings, the interview’s main contribution is to outline the duo’s framing of fame, rebellion, and continuation through an intentionally unresolved third presence.