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25 YEARS

Tim & Barry

Opening 4 April, 2025 

Exhibition 4 April - 3 May, 2025

Thursday to Saturday 14h - 18h & by rdv: info@goswellroad.com

Goswell Road is proud to present 25 YEARS, a curated retrospective celebrating the iconic work of UK-based artist duo Tim & Barry. This exhibition opens on April 4th, 2025, and offers a unique opportunity to explore their revolutionary contributions to underground music culture. Spanning Grime, UK Drill, Dubstep, Chicago Footwork, and more, the show documents over two decades of boundary-pushing visual storytelling that continues to evolve and inspire the same scenes it documents.

2025 marks 25 years of collaboration for Tim & Barry, who have been at the heart of underground black electronic music, closely collaborating with the artists that define each genre. Their photography and video work provides an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the places and people that have driven music forward. From the raw energy of Grime and UK Drill to the club pulse of Dubstep and Bassline, to the dance-driven beats of UK Funky and the international connections between UK music and scenes like Chicago Footworks, Dancehall and St Lucian Dennery segment, they have been there to capture it all.

Tim & Barry’s video platform—« Tim & Barry TV »—launched in 2006, is key to their legacy. As pioneers of content creation and YouTube culture, they transformed how underground music was shared with the world. Later, expanding it with other channels such as « Just Jam »[1] which The Guardian described as a « punk alternative to Boiler Room, »[2] it became a powerful live event and live stream, creating a raw, unfiltered space for performances that broke down the barriers between artists and their audiences.

In 2018, they launched two influential YouTube series’: « The Lift » and « No Miming ». Both platforms became essential in their own right. « The Lift » turned the traditional music booth on its head, replacing it with an actual lift, showcasing artists in a unique, intimate space that highlighted the raw, unscripted nature of the performances. « No Miming », which frequently opens with the phrase, « This Freestyle was Recorded Live on Road », furthered Tim & Barry’s vision of documenting the unvarnished, real side of homegrown underground black electronic music.

Tim & Barry’s work also includes the iconic Tempa T « Hext Hype » video, which remains one of the standout moments in grime’s visual history. The video perfectly encapsulated the raw and energetic spirit of the genre, adding another layer to Tim & Barry’s extensive archive of groundbreaking work. In 2014, Tim & Barry won a MOBO Award for « That’s Not Me », the video they made for grime pioneers Skepta and JME, a recognition of their contribution to the visual culture surrounding black electronic music. Unaware that the video had even been nominated, they famously celebrated by tweeting a photo of a bag of crisps and a pint—a fittingly understated response.

Tim & Barry’s approach has always been about collaboration and respect, working directly with artists to document their creativity in a way that feels real and unfiltered. As Complex Magazine aptly puts it, « Tim & Barry have meticulously documented and supported nearly every facet of British underground music, » making them key figures in shaping how these cultures are viewed and understood globally.

« While many are happy to frame underground music and its key players as aggressive as their bars and flows, Tim & Barry have always approached their subjects with honesty and endearment. They don’t film the likes of Skengdo X AM or 67 because they think they have a dangerous edge, they do it because those people have a talent they want to show to the world. In short, as the world becomes more and more cynical—as tower-blocks are reduced to an aesthetic and kids are stopped in the streets for apparently ‘looking like’ they belong to a gang—Tim & Barry have made a career out of stripping all that nonsense away to showcase the realness. »

— James Keith, TRENCH

Supported by Fluxus Art Projects, 25 YEARS presents a unique opportunity to see their oeuvre, offering a fresh and powerful perspective on the underground music scenes that have changed the cultural landscape over the last two decades.

[1] Tim & Barry's « Just Jam » has been streaming underground global Electronic music since 2009.

[2] Boiler Room was launched in March 2010 in London by Thristian "Thris Tian" Richards and Femi Adeyemi, the founder of NTS Radio. Tim & Barry host the monthly ‘Tim & Barry Show’ on NTS Radio.

Bio:Tim & Barry are a UK-based artist duo since 2000.