TIM GATENBY
Souvenir438Space is proud to present GREED, a solo exhibition by Tim Gatenby at our new location.
GREED explores the dichotomy of present-day society and popular culture. Gatenby blurs the lines between traditional painting and the cartoonish characters that marked our childhoods, repurposing well-known pop culture imagery and repositioning it in obscene contexts. In a consumerist culture where everyone seeks pleasure, power and addiction, the artist holds up a mirror and asks us to consume it all in an unsettling way which cannot help but draw us further in.
There is a twisted nostalgia to Gatenby’s paintings. Often combining deconstructed cartoon characters with dark humour, his images reflect the pressures of consumerism and a modern societal tendency towards over-indulgence. Fast food is an ever-present theme in Gatenby’s work and is used as a vehicle to convey the easiness of modern life.The result is a culture addicted to excess, yet spiritually malnourished, where the human condition is reduced to transaction, performance, and spectacle. GREED exists inside this contradiction, it simultaneously critiques greed while surviving within the machinery that profits from it. Gatenby pokes fun at the status quo, subverting narratives and broadcasting a new form of critique.
Despite the darkness found in the various styles and themes explored in Gatenby’s work, there are often playful, idiosyncratic moments that crop up, as if for his own amusement as much as the viewer’s. A joke or pun can be found through an depicted object seen out of place, or an expectation subverted by an oddity, giving the work a comedic touch of the absurd to cleverly contrast the heaviness found elsewhere.
GREED Solo Exhibition by Tim Gatenby
Private View: Thursday 2 July 2026, 6–9pm
Exhibition dates: 3-19 July 2026
Public: Wed – Sat : 11 – 6 pm (Or by appointment)
Souvenir 438 Space, 5 Kingsland Rd, London, E2 8AA (Shoreditch)