artists-from-the-united-kingdom

"As a kid I was bullied when I came to the UK because I was dark-skinned had short hair and just didn't fit in. I didn't speak that much English and was dyslexic so I had many challenges. But my mum was my inspiration as she encouraged me and said you can be whoever you want to be. I was always looking for inspiration and people who could inspire me, I wanted to listen to people's journeys."

"The best way to celebrate is to give those who lack. 40 years of life has been phenomenal and I want to continue impacting society and humanity."

"When you ask someone who inspires you they always say Bill Gates or Steve Jobs - there are no African names and we (Africans) have great African people doing great things."

"Know your audience. The better your understanding of your audience the better you can communicate with them."

"Try not to influence what a journalist writes, as long as they have the facts."

"Understanding what it is that a journalist needs; if you can make it any easier for a journalist to do his/her job it always helps."

"Communication is key in any relationship and journalists are no different; for the more and clearer the information you give the better the relationship."

"We want our Art to bring out the from inside the Liberal and conversely to bring out the Liberal from inside the Bigot."

"We think of our art as just pictures, not as photographs. We are using photography, not being photographers."

"To create, you must empty yourself of every artistic thought."

"Really creative thinking does not occur with regard to problems."

"If you are submerged in normal life, then your view will be normal. So we have to keep separate from normal life in order to be able to say something that is not known. People come to art for something that they don’t understand, that’s not in their life already."

"It is important to us to publish our art in books and catalogues, so as many people as possible are able to see it, but we also want them to see the real pieces. We like it very much when the pictures take over. When they’re bigger than the viewer. You go to a museum to look at a picture, but we like it when the picture looks at you."

"George: One man naked is a male study; more than one, well... that's quite serious - two men naked are more naked than one."

"George: We say that how we are that day made us do that picture and we have to respect that. If you have another thought, that's another picture; it would be another one."

"We like to think that we’re forming our tomorrows, that we’re making pictures that don’t exist in reality, that maybe tomorrow will be a little bit more like our pictures than it would otherwise."

"People used to refer to our art as "gay art"—though they never said the "gay art of Leonardo or Michelangelo." Much of our content used to be taboo and isn't considered that anymore, not just in the obvious ways of sexuality or bodies. The art world has moved to the point that Gilbert & George isn't on the radical edge anymore."

"But we don't want to think. It's exhausting enough without that. We didn't think when we did the Ginkgo Pictures, at all. Afterwards we found out all this stuff about them."

"We don't want to know what we are doing. It's much better not to know. You have to express yourselves, once you've finished a group of works you have to start all over again. It's extraordinary stuff - what an artist has to do. You finish a big group of works, then the next day you have to begin again. Forty years we've been doing that."

"A clergyman once said to us, "Jealousy is a bad thing. But I must confess that I am sometimes jealous of the artist because the artist is closer to creation.""

"SM: Let’s start with a trivial question: why Gilbert and George and not George and Gilbert?"

"SM: You’ve always put yourselves in the center of your work and there’s a strong performance element in your practice. Has it changed throughout the years?"

"If a performance artist started going on about England and our culture like that-in fact that's happened to Gilbert and George, they are about the only ones I know that have done anything of this sort. It seems to me that both yourself and other artists can talk about flags and America and all this… you can play with these ideas, you may not believe in it, that you can play such a close game with them without anyone being offended."

"THE SINGING SCULPTURE brought Gilbert & George their first taste of fame in 1969. The piece consists of the artists performing a 1930s music hall song called "Underneath the Arches". Gilbert & George would stand on a table and sing along to a record of the old song, wearing tweed suits, with their faces painted bronze, and using a glove and a plastic walking stick as props. The song’s lyrics tell about the life of a tramp in London whose home is outdoors underneath the arches of a bridge. Gilbert & George first performed the piece under a bridge in London, and were soon invited to perform it in many European cities where it was always received as a sensation."

"THE LAWS OF SCULPTORS"

"There are no white skins, and there are no black skins. Humans skins are of different shades of orange."

"If I have problems perceiving a color I don't know who to go to – an opthamologist, a neurologist, or a computer programmer."

"Light is slow."

"Frankly, Neil Harbisson, freaked me the fuck out. Both inspirational and terrifying. Like seeing a benevolent witch displaying her magic: even if you’re only using your powers to grow magic daffodils, it’s an ungodly talent that’s beyond human."

"I had a very special encounter with him. Surreal and especially futuristic. He raises so many questions, so many lines of thought, that force you to think differently."

"Neil Harbisson is one of the world's first bona fide cyborgs."

"Harbisson's antenna, hovering above his Henry V-meets-the-Monkees hairdo, is quite the lifestyle statement. I tell him he looks like a cross between an insect and a call-centre worker."

"Harbisson meets two apparently incompatible conditions: shyness and exhibitionism. He speaks softly, never utters a word higher than another and his body language is that of someone slightly retracted. However, he walks all over the world with a cyborg eye dangling over his forehead in a kind of antenna that seems to sprout from within his head. Along the way, people nudge each other and point at him. But non of that stops him, he remains impassive and continues on his way."

"I don't feel that I'm using technology, I don't feel that I'm wearing technology, I feel that I am technology."

"When you're a little weird, you aspire to be normal; when you're very weird, you aspire to be recognised for it."

"Beware not to use the future as an excuse to ignore living in the present."

"If salads sounded like Justin Bieber, children would eat more vegetables."

"It's not the union between my head and the electronic eye what makes me feel 'cyborg', it's the union between the software and my brain."

"Technology is made by humans. If we modify our body with human creations we become more human."

"Life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body."

"It seems reasonable to expect that beauty will emerge from a fusion of the individual character and culture of the potter ,with the nature of his materials."