ANDREW KÖTTING CV
Andrew Kötting was born in Elmstead Woods in 1959. After some early forays into market trading and scrap-metal dealing he travelled to Scandinavia to become a Lumberjack. He returned home in the 80’s to study for a BA Honours Degree in Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design and then graduated with a Masters Degree from The Slade, University College, London. He currently lives and works between Hastings in England and Fougax-et-Barrineuf in the forests of the French Pyrenees. He teaches part-time at the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury where he is Professor of Time Based Media.
He has made numerous experimental short films, which were awarded prizes at several international film festivals. Gallivant (1996), was his first feature film, a road movie about his three-month journey around the coast of Britain, with his grandmother Gladys and his daughter Eden, which won the Channel 4 Prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival for Best Director and the Golden Ribbon Award in Rimini (Italy). The film went on in 2011 to be voted number 49 as Best British Film of all time by the UK publication Time Out.
In 2001 he directed the first of his Landworks Trilogy; This Filthy Earth, which was commissioned through Film4, British Screen and The Film Council and in 2009 he made the second part, Ivul, a French/Swiss co-production. Both films were released theatrically throughout the UK and France. Lek and the Dogs, the third and final part, is currently in development with the BFI.
In 2011 he produced This Our Still Life, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was acquired by the BFI for distribution in the UK and Ireland and by ED Distribution in France.
Since 1982, as well as performances, installations and publications, he has made over one hundred film and video works that have been shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television around the world and awarded prizes at many international film festivals.
In addition to his multimedia art project, performance, installation and bookwork; Swandown, he also created in collaboration with the writer Iain Sinclair a body of work entitled By Our Selves. The film premiered at FID in Marseille and was distributed to critical acclaim throughout the UK by Soda Pictures.
In the UK he has had retrospectives of his work at Tate Britain, ICA and the NFT and in Europe at Oberhausen, Osnabruck, Hamburg, La Rochelle, Rotterdam, Paris and Cork.
2016 saw a 6 week retrospective of his films at Cinema Nova in Brussels, the release of two short animated films in collaboration with his daughter Eden and a multi media arts project Edith made with Iain Sinclair, Jem Finer, Claudia Barton, David Aylward and Anonymous Bosch.
Andrew Kötting is one of Britain’s most intriguing artists, and perhaps the only film-maker currently practising who could be said to have taken to heart the spirit of visionary curiosity and hybrid creativity exemplified by the late Derek Jarman. His twenty year oeuvre to date has moved from early live-art inflected, often absurdist pieces, through darkly comic shorts teasing out the melancholy surrealism at the heart of contemporary Englishness to seven resolutely independent feature films that take landscape and journeys as the springboards for visually striking and structurally inventive enquiries into identity, belonging, history and notions of community. It is his openness and outlaw intelligence and compelling wit that marks out his work as both vital and important. Gareth Evans, Curator, Whitechapel.
FEATURE FILMS PERFORMANCES INSTALLATIONS & EXHIBITIONS (Selection)
2019 AHOY! THEIR THERE THEY’RE (with EDEN Kötting) SEE SPRAY GALLERY HASTINGS
2018 LEK AND THE DOGS Feature-film, bookwork
2017 JOURNEY WORKS Installation - Swandown, By Our Selves & Edith - TOWNER GALLERY Eastbourne
2016 EDITH Feature-film, bookwork, installation, CD and performance
Root 1066 Arts Festival - Kino Teatr, Hastings
2015 BY OUR SELVES (with Iain Sinclair) Feature-film, bookwork, installation and performance
Dilston Grove. Battersea Arts Centre. Whitechapel Gallery. Colchester Arts Centre. Oxford Brookes University. CPH Dox. UK cinema release through Soda Pictures
2012 SWANDOWN (with Iain Sinclair) Feature-film, bookwork, installation and performance
Dilston Grove, METAL Southend-on-Sea. Aldeburgh Music Festival. British Library. UK cinema release through Cornerhouse and ED Distribution, France
2012 HIS WORK THEIR WORK MY WORK HIS WORDS (with Eden Kötting) Blackshed Gallery Kent. Claremont Studios, St Leonards-on-Sea. Towner Gallery Group Show, Eastbourne
2011 HIDING FROM THE BIG GUNS Performance (with Eden Kötting) More Soup and Tart Barbican. Stone Squid Gallery, Hastings
2011 THIS OUR STILL LIFE (with Eden Kötting) - Feature-film, bookwork, installation and performance Brighton University. Oudenade Belgium, UK cinema release through BFI
2009 IVUL - Feature-film, installation and performance Le Fresnoy Gallery, France. Fish Gallery Hastings. UK cinema release through Artificial Eye and ED Distribution France
2007 IN THE WAKE OF A DEADAD - Feature-film, bookwork, installation and performance Dilston Grove, London. Barbican Foyer, London. Hayward Gallery performance. PAB Gallery, Ales, France. Itinerances Festival Ales. ED Distribution France
2002 MAPPING PERCEPTION (with Dr Mark Lythgoe, Giles Lane and Eden Kötting) - Installation
2001 THIS FILTHY EARTH - Feature-film UK cinema release through Film Four and ED Distribution France
1996 GALLIVANT - Feature-film UK cinema release through BFI and ED Distribution France and Group Gendai Films, Japan and Film Forum, Germany
SHORT FILMS VIDEOS PERFORMANCES & INSTALLATIONS (Selection)
2021 DISEASED & DISORDERLY (with EDEN Kötting) 13 minute live action animation - Tyke Films for BFI
2019 WHAT CAN YOU SEE?
2018 DOG ATE DOG (with Eden Kötting and Glenn Whiting)
2018 THEIR RANCID WORDS STAGNATE OUR PONDS
2017 HAND ME DOWN
2017 KLIPPERTY KLÖPP - TWIN SCREEN (with Yumino Seki)
2017 FORGOTTEN THE QUEEN (with Eden Kötting and Glenn Whiting)
2016 EDITH LOOPS
2016 ALL IN THE MIND (with Eden Kötting and Glenn Whiting)
2016 ALL AT SEA (with Eden Kötting)
2016 ALL IN THE MIND (with Eden Kötting)
2015 BLACK APPLES - Installation
2015 COMBAT
2014 BUOYED BY THE IRRLEVANCE OF THEIR OWN INSIGNIFICANCE - Installation
2014 THE WOMAN OF KENT
2014 THE SUN CAME DRIPPING A BUCKET FULL OF GOLD - Installation
2014 THIS ILLUMINATED WORLD IS FULL OF STUPID MEN
2013 UNDERLAND BEYOND THE MOUNTING FEAR - Installation
2012 ABOVE THEM THE WORLD BEYOND
2011 AN HISTORY OF CIVILISATION - Installation
2010 SEA SWALLOW’D (with Curious) - Installation/Performance
2009 EDGELAND MUTTER
2007 OFFSHORE
2002 TOO G
2000 KINGDOM PROTISTA
1995 JAUNT
1994 LA BAS
1993 SMART ALEK
1991 ACUMEN
1990 HOI POLLOI
1988 HUBUBINTHEBAOBABS - Installation
1984 KLIPPERTY KLOPP – Installation/Performance
