FAD Magazine

FAD Magazine covers contemporary art – News, Exhibitions and Interviews reported on from London

Andy Holden’s Laws of Motion


Still from Andy Holden: Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape

It’s always nice to see a significant project unfold from the beginning. Back in 2011, Andy Holden was in residence at the Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingston, and I caught his brilliant illustrated lecture on ‘Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape’, setting out the typical tropes of the cartoon as a starting point for analysing art and the world. The artist’s lecture was having something of a moment them, as I recall Ryan Gander and Doug Fishbone also excelling. The problem is that such events are hard to repeat – but Holden found a very logical solution. Continuing to develop his ideas over 2011-17, he has inserted a cartoon avatar of himself into a film version. Now that film comes to London for the first time in the highly appropriate setting of the Cinema Museum, Kennington (21 Feb – 10 March). You can see why it took a while: Holden has sourced over 400 illustrative clips, the range of references – from cave painting to Futurism to Slavoj Žižek to quantum mechanics – is dizzying, and the analogies he draws out of the material are persuasive and witty. Untrammelled by his erudition, Holden provides a most entertaining hour.

Holden’s 2011 installation in Kingston included the list of laws

By way of a flavour. Law I states that ‘any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation’. That leads Holden to observe that ‘capitalism as a whole operates with nothing below it’ – and, as the 2009 collapse of banking system showed, it was ‘oblivious till it looked down’. I also love Walt Disney’s explanation of how there should be an underlying logic to cartoon impossibilities: the spine which runs the length of a cow ‘explains’ why pulling its tail rings the bell on its neck. And the comparisons Holden draws between the unmooring of cartoons from the factual world with post-modernism in the arts and ‘post-truth’ in politics are spot-on. There are ten laws of motion. No. 11 could be: go see this…

See below for the trailer for ‘Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape’.

ANDY HOLDEN: LAWS OF MOTION IN A CARTOON LANDSCAPE Opening Night Thursday 21st FEB 7-10pm Friday 22nd – Sunday 3rd March, CINEMA MUSEUM 2 Dugard Way (off Renfrew Road) London SE11 4TH

Art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent sees a lot of shows: we asked him to jot down whatever came into his head

Categories

Tags

Related Posts

Alexis Hunter: ‘The Model’s Revenge I-III’, 1974 - Set of three silver gelatin prints, 41 x 51 cm

Paul’s Gallery of the Week: Richard Saltoun

I first met Richard Saltoun some 16 years ago, when he was dealing from Savile Row together with Laurent Delaye (who now runs his gallery from Ramsgate) prior to setting up on his own account in 2012

Trending Articles

Join the FAD newsletter and get the latest news and articles straight to your inbox

* indicates required