Blond Contemporary and Guerin Projects present “And All Shall be Memorialised”, a Solo exhibition of paintings by Timothy Gatenby.

Timothy Gatenby has produced a completely new series of work exclusively for Blond Contemporary.

The paintings are about consumerism, classicism and culture. Gatenby’s new body of work represents Classical and Pop culture icons, describing well acclaimed objects of contemporary consumerist culture, alongside revered sculptures from the Classical age to the Modernist era. They create a visual link between the totems of the then and now, triggering our subconscious belief system: Is the Coke bottle as much of a cultural symbol as Michelangelo’s David? The theoretical lines are blurred. Tim’s pieces are anthems to a classical painting technique, having spent 10 years at the Charles Cecil Studios in Florence, his works are extremely skilled, taking after the John Singer Sargent’s sight size method.

The paintings reference the Pop and Dada alienation of the object as a consumerist fetish, the art as object, notably found in the work of Richard Hamilton, Tom Wesselmann and Marcel Duchamp amongst many others. In Gatenby’s pieces, the subjects are alienated and put on a pedestal, asking the viewer to think about them as totemic symbols, either of classical or of consumerist culture.

Phillip Blond quote:
“Tim’s work accesses and archives the sculptural iconography of the past and parallels it with the present and subjects all to a contemporary aesthetic rendering. For the monuments of the past he refigures them for our present for the monoliths of the present he archives them in an archaic past.”

Timothy about his works:
“This series of works draws inspiration from mundane everyday items and classical antiquity to ask questions of iconography in the modern world. I have curated my favourite sculptures many of which influenced me during my time studying in Florence and painted them blurred out hoping to explore the digital age that we find ourselves now living in. For me, there is as much nostalgia attached to pieces such as the Laocoon or Michelangelo’s David as there is to an old Evian bottle. In the works objects are blurred out to evoke the fading of memories and the passing of time.”

Marie-Claudine Llamas about the works:
“I highly respect Tim’s focus, and the way in which he has acquired this incredible painting technique, which is so Classical and made it his own. These paintings will stand the test of time, for their astonishing skill, humour and strong Art Historical relevance.”