Nick Gentry | London-based Contemporary Artist

Artist Nick Gentry

Nick in the studio January 2025
Photo by Paolina Stadler for Artiq

Nick Gentry is a British artist and Central Saint Martins graduate who uses the physical remnants of discarded tech to tell human stories. He reimagines obsolete digital waste – from floppy disks to VHS tapes – at his studio in London’s Walthamstow, where he pushes the boundaries of traditional portraiture.

Gentry’s work turns the items he sources into relics, using them to imagine a future that is sci-fi inspired – often featuring the humanoids he is known for creating. They are striking, slightly melancholy, futuristic figures. Gentry has transformed thousands of discarded floppy disks, film negatives, and medical X-rays into large-scale portraits, and his engaged international community contributes to some of his projects through donating old media. The disks he uses are just as likely to hold brightly labeled retro video games as they are sensitive files.

Since Gentry began this work in the 2000s, the presence of AI and fear around technology has only grown more real. Gentry was an early adopter of exploring these themes in his art, and masks heavy, existential weight behind a veil of nostalgic whimsy. In dialogue with Neil Postman’s warnings in Amusing Ourselves to Death, the artwork explores our willing, joyful surrender to a 'technopoly'. We are invited to question how our obsession with digital amusement distracts us from the very real commodification of our personal lives.

Gentry is explorative in his approach to art. For example, his other work includes a video game, for which he designed the graphics in old-style pixel art – again, speaking to an interest in bringing the past into the present. He’s also dedicated to social art projects in schools and has been working in education to encourage a new generation of creatives.

Gentry’s talent has been recognised across the art world, and he’s been featured on TV, radio, and online in BBC News, ITV News, Evening Standard, Forbes, and multiple other titles. His works have been on display in London, New York, Paris, Miami, Singapore, Barcelona, and other major cities.

Text by Tanyel Mustafa | Adapted from the original feature published by Crafts Council

About Nick Gentry

Full Artist CV (PDF)

Nick Gentry BBC News Feature

BBC Radio 4 interview on 'The Digital Human'
BBC Radio 4

Studio playlist

Hear the music that inspires my art

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