Created over the past two years, Gilbert & George’s NEW NORMAL PICTURES are a continuation of their street-level explorations of life in East London.

‘We are asking “What is human life?” and making pictures about it,’ the artists explain. Although the series predates the pandemic, it resonates with the universal experience of a ‘new normal’ over the past year as the world has adjusted to a fundamental shift in its daily reality. However, the phrase has a broader significance for the artists, who see it as a stand-in for the word ‘existential’, referring to a sense of normality that is constantly being adjusted and renewed.

This is reflected in the urban otherworldliness of their pictures and the introduction of radical new elements that contribute to their surreal intensity. ‘For us, art is an evolution. We call it a journey through life from the beginning, and being involved in something different.’ Suffused with a technicolour haze, the clashing tonal contrasts and distortions of scale and perspective in these new works combine to form a vision of London that is subtly off-kilter, not-quite-normal. The outsized forms of balloons used to inhale nitrous oxide or the monochrome drug bags silhouetted against a nuclear sunset contribute to the sense of an altered state. Recognisable places such as Arcola Street or the cemetery at Christ Church Spitalfields, everyday items such as post boxes and park benches, and even the familiar figures of the artists themselves are rendered uncanny and, in their own words, ‘disturbing’.