Timothy Gatenby | And All Shall be Memorialised: Gallery Exhibition: 7 Piccadilly Arcade
Past exhibition
Overview
“Timothy Gatenby’s work accesses and archives the sculptural iconography of the past and parallels it with the present, subjecting all elements to a contemporary aesthetic rendering. He refigures the monuments of the past for our present, and archives the monoliths of the present in an archaic past"
- Phillip Blond
Timothy Gatenby (b. 1989) is guided by the exploration of the intersections of consumerism, classicism, and cultural memory, forging unexpected links between the totems of antiquity and the icons of contemporary life. His latest series presents a dialogue between revered sculptures from the Classical and Modernist eras and mass-produced objects of consumer culture, raising questions about symbolism, value, and the passage of time. By juxtaposing these forms, Gatenby challenges the subconscious hierarchies we assign to objects, blurring the boundaries between the sacred and the everyday.
A classically trained painter, Gatenby honed his technique over a decade at the Charles Cecil Studios in Florence, mastering the sight-size method of John Singer Sargent and the layered depth of Italian Renaissance glazing. This meticulous approach is married to a conceptual sensibility drawn from Pop and Dada, recalling the object-fetishisation of Richard Hamilton, Tom Wesselmann, and Marcel Duchamp. His paintings elevate their subjects to near-mythic status, presenting them as relics of a shared visual language, whether they originate in a Renaissance workshop or a supermarket aisle.
The interplay between past and present is central to Gatenby’s unique treatment of imagery: objects and figures are often blurred or partially obscured, evoking the fleeting nature of memory in the digital age. The result is a form of fantastical realism - one that merges the grandeur of art history with the ephemera of modern life, inviting viewers to reconsider what we choose to memorialise.
Gatenby has exhibited internationally, with works held in major collections across New York and Seoul. His distinctive visual language, combining classical technique with conceptual inquiry, has established him as a significant voice in contemporary figurative painting.
Installation Views
