The Urethra Postcard Art of Gilbert & George

On Saturday I went to a gallery named after a shape to look at rectangular things laid out in rectangles. 

Gilbert & George have collected baker's dozens of identical postcards from London phoneboxes and gift shops for decades.  The postcards feature adverts for niche sex workers, phallic London monuments or flags incorporating the Union Flag.  I'm surprised no-one noticed their hoarding - I can't really imagine them dressing down, or doing anything incognito.  Perhaps they despatched work experience minions, or hired ringers whose assumed names also begin with G.  Anyway, they've decided that laying out 12 postcards to form a frame around a central one - with all 13 featuring the same design - creates a sexual image representing a sort of masculine urethra.  Leaving questions of anatomical inconvenience to one side (sharp corners? Just think of the paper cuts), this begs an important question.

Can you enjoy an exhibition when its fundamental premise is such absolute horsepiffle, hogwash and quite possibly weaselcleanser?  Well, yes.  Yes, you can, here.  Because there's an awful lot to like about it.

As a casual (OK, perhaps smart casual) vexillologist, I can't pretend that the flags didn't help.  Feigning indifference here would be a swizzle of epic proportions, since I spent most of my only visit to New York staring up at the UN building and buying replica flags in their gift shop.  And these weren't just any flags, they were obscure flags of tiny British dependencies.  South Georgia!  Niue!  Tristan da Cunha!  I'd better move on before I lose another post to flag porn, but these names were far more exciting to me than anything written on the prostitutes' calling cards.

Speaking of which, the array of outlandish sexual practices promised around the room would make this exhibition absolutely perfect for a first date. I've always maintained that you can tell a lot about a person from their reaction to phrases such as "still 1/2 girl!", "brown showers" and "I'LL DRAG YOU ROUND MY POSH FLAT BY YOUR NUTS YOU FILTHY VETCH". Also, the exhibition is free, so you can save some money to spend later on dinner. And by dinner I mean alcohol. And if they're teetotal, it wasn't meant to be.

Each arrangement of postcards is very carefully catalogued. I spent quite a bit of time trying to decode the symbols displayed under each title. I've missed my calling as a librarian. There are two rooms in the exhibition - one contains vertical layouts, the other horizontal. The number of arrangements needed for each exhibition is apparently calculated meticulously by Gilbert and George based on a scale model of the gallery, and the arrangements are neatly rolled out to fit. Their approach reminds me of Lászlo Moholy-Nagy and his Bauhaus constructivists, and those fantastic 2006 modernism exhibitions at Tate Modern and the V&A.

Listen - it's free, it's fun, it's filthy, there are flags, and I've somehow managed to finish writing this without once complaining about the lack of a proper gift shop. If that's not a recommendation, I need to go away and look up 'recommendation' again. It's open from 10-6 at White Cube Mason's Yard from Tuesday to Saturday until 19 February. Pop in for half an hour and come out smiling.