Andrew Gilbert

Provocative, political and variously colorful, the multimedia work of Scottish artist Andrew Gilbert takes on the bloody and brutal history of British colonization around the world. Creating sculptures, paintings and mixed media, Gilbert’s works subvert and satirize various aspects of British culture, in particular reference to the African Zulu tribe, which became an obsession for the artist at a young age. Often incorporating himself into his grotesquely fantastical compositions, Gilbert’s personalized iconographies and over the top caricatures are at once playfully surreal and brutally honest—capturing the blood, racism and tyranny of occupation.

Gilbert’s work has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions including Gesellschaft Museum, Luebeck, SPERLING, Munich, Blank Projects, Cape Town, South Africa, Gallery Polad-Hardouin, Paris, Galerie Kai Erdmann, Hamburg, Forte Strino Military Museum, Italy, Ten Haaf Projects, Amsterdam, Gallery Polad Hardouin, Paris, Galerie Andreas Hoehne, Munich, and Galerie Eva Bracke, Berlin, among others. Group exhibitions include Tate Britain, London, Bavarian Army Museum, Ingolstadt, Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Museum of New Art, Detroit, and nationalmuseum, Berlin. In 2010 Gilbert was a Goethe Institute Artist in Residency at Meetfactory International Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague.