ARTIST’S STATEMENT

 

My work moves from live-art inflected, often absurdist performance pieces (corrupted by their own internal logics and skewed mythologies), through to film and video works. I take landscape and journeys as springboards for autobiographical enquiries into identity, belonging, history and place, often teasing out both the 'melancholy' and the 'dada' in contemporary culture. I have a wide range of formal interests but also refuse to adopt conventional ideas of closure around artworks in any medium and therefore embrace the notions of 'spillage' from one discipline into another. Ideas, sounds and images frequently migrate between media; echoing and amplifying this ‘spillage’. Throughout my practice I have produced paintings, vinyl records, cds, films, videos and bookworks and created for digital and animation platforms. I make work for both the cinema and gallery context, informed primarily by autobiography, psychogeography and hauntology. Teaching, mentoring and my role as a Professor of time Based Media also continues to have an impact on my practice but it is the collaborations with my severely disabled daughter, Eden that is of the most significance.  

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Andrew Kötting was born between the mountains and the sea in the London Borough of Bromley in 1959. After some early forays into market trading and scrap-metal dealing he travelled to Scandinavia to become a failed 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 in St Leonards-on-Sea.

He has made over a hundred experimental short films, which were awarded prizes at 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 2020 to be voted number 49 as Best British Film of all time by the UK publication Time Out.

In 2011 he directed This Our Still Life, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was acquired by the BFI for distribution in the UK and Ireland.  
He then collaborated with the writer and poet Iain Sinclair on their SWANDOWN (2012) project which produced a series of performances, exhibitions, installations, a map and eventually a feature film.  They then went on in 2015 to produce BY OUR SELVES in collaboration with Toby Jones, a series of performances, an installation and a feature film. In 2016 a rag taggle collective, which again included Iain Sinclair, the artist Anonymous Bosch, the musicians Jem Finer, David Aylward and Claudia Barton created a series of performances, installations, exhibitions, a feature film and a bookwork, entitled Edith Walks.

Thereafter in 2017 he was commissioned through Salon Pictures to make Lek And The Dogs. The film was inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov, a young boy who ran away from home and survived on the streets of Moscow for two years with the protection of a pack of wild dogs. Adapted for the stage by Hattie Naylor as Ivan and the Dogs, she went on to collaborate with Kötting, who she was at The Slade with on the screenplay. The film also starred Xavier Tchili who had already worked with Kötting on his feature films This Filthy Earth and IVUL.

Lek and the Dogs was regarded by the director as the final part of his Earthworks Trilogy. The films taken place on the ground, above the ground and under the ground respectively. Badbloodandsibyl also published The Earthworks bookwork, which contextualizes the films with essays, photographs and scripts, including contribuions from his various collaborators.

In 2019 he again worked with Iain Sinclair on the feature film The Whalebone Box. Apparently some time ago, a whalebone box that was found washed up on a remote beach was given to the writer. Once touched the box had the potential to change lives. The filmmaker, photographer Anonymous Bosch and Sinclair take the box on a reverse pilgrimage from London back to the Isle of Harris, where it had been made by the sculptor Steven Dilworth.

As well as numerous short films and animations in collaboration with his daughter Eden, the animator Glenn Whiting and the 3D animator Isabel Skinner Kötting continues to push at what is yet possible within the realms of new media. And in particular the VR projects THE TELL TALE ROOMS and most recently (2026) THE EVERYWORLD which have been presented as touring exhibitions, installations and one off events for galleries, museums and film festivals.

In 2025 his feature film The Memory Blocks, commissioned through The University of Ulster, premiered at The Edinburgh International film festival and has just been acquired by the BFI player to stream across their digital platforms. Most of his other films are also available through MUBI, Amazon Prime or BFI player. Some are also available on DVD or Blu Ray through badbloodandsibyl   

 

“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 fourty-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 ten 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 disability and community. It is his openness, underpinned by an outlaw intelligence and compelling wit that marks out his work as both vital and important.”

 

SELECTED FEATURE FILMS

2025 THE MEMORY BLOCKS - Experimental Documentary Feature 70 minutes Future Screens NI Commission through Ulster University
2020 THE WHALEBONE BOX - Experimental Documentary Feature 84 minutes Distributed by HOME Manchester and Online by MUBI Amazon Prime & BFI player
2017 LEK AND THE DOGS – Experimental Documentary Feature 90 minutes
Produced by Salon Pictures and BFI Online by MUBI Amazon Prime & BFI player
2016 EDITH WALKS - Experimental Documentary Feature 60 minutes
Performance, Installation and Bookwork Distributed by HOME Manchester Online by MUBI Amazon Prime & BFI player
2015 BY OUR SELVES - Experimental Documentary Feature 80 minutes
Performance, Installation and Bookwork Distributed by Soda Pictures UK and ED Distribution in France & Online by MUBI Amazon Prime & BFI player
2012 SWANDOWN - Experimental Documentary Feature 94 minutes
Performance, Installation and Bookwork Distributed by HOME Manchester Online by MUBI Amazon Prime & BFI player
2011 THIS OUR STILL LIFE - Experimental Documentary Feature 60 minutes
Performance, Installation and Bookwork Distributed by BFI in UK and ED Distribution in France Online by MUBI Amazon Prime & BFI player
2009 IVUL - Feature film 35mm 96 minutes
Produced by Sciapode (F) and Box Productions (CH) - Distributed by Artificial Eye in UK, ED Distribution in France and Swiss Films in Switzerland.
2007 IN THE WAKE OF A DEADAD - Video 62 minutes Performance, Installation  and Bookwork - Distributed by LUX in UK and Centre Pompidou in France.
2001 THIS FILTHY EARTH - Feature Film & installation 35mm, 108 minutes
Produced by Film 4, British Screen, YMDA, ELFF and Film Council.
Distributed by BFI in UK and ED Distribution in France.
1996 GALLIVANT - Experimental Documentary Feature, 35mm, 104 minutes
Produced by Tall Stories, British Film Institute, Channel 4 Film, National Lottery.
Distributed by BFI in UK, ED Distribution in France and Group Gendai Films in Japan.

 

SELECTED SHORT FILMS

2025 HOPE HOLDS UP HER HEAD AND HOPES
2023 THE TELL TALE ROOMS (VR Project)
2021 DISEASED AND DISORDERLY (with Glenn Whiting, Isabel Skinner & Eden Kötting)
2022 THE BUZZ OF THE PAST
2020 BECAUSE THE REST IS SILENCE
2018 THEIR RANCID WORDS STAGNATE OUR PONDS
2018 DOG ATE DOG (with Glenn Whiting & Eden Kötting)
2017 FORGOTTEN THE QUEEN (with Glenn Whiting & Eden Kötting)
2016 ALL IN THE MIND (with Glenn Whiting & Eden Kötting)
2016 ALL AT SEE (with Glenn Whiting & Eden Kötting)
2015 BLACK APPLES (with Iain Sinclair)
2014 BOUYED BY THE IRRLEVANCE OF THEIR OWN SIGNIFICANCE
2014 THE SUN CAME DRIPPING A BUCKET FULL OF GOLD
2014 THIS ILLUMINATED WORLD IS FULL OF STUPID MEN
2012 ABOVE THEM THE WORLD BEYOND
2011 AN HISTORY OF CIVILISATION short video
2011 LANDFILL (with CURIOUS) and Arts Admin) short video
2011 LA ROCHELLE EST UNE VILLE short video
2011 MIREUIL MEANDER short video
2010 SEA SWALLOW’D (with CURIOUS) short film
2009 EDGELAND MUTTER (with Iain Sinclair) short video
2007 OFFSHORE (with Iain Sinclair) short film
2004 VISIONARY LANDSCAPES (with Jem Finer) film/video
2002 MAPPING PERCEPTION Film 35 mm, 37 minutes Installation, Publication and Website
2002 TOO G short film/Video (with Arts Catalyst & Star City Moscow)
2000 INVALIDS short film/Video (with Channel 4 Film Lab / Dazed & Confused)
2000 KINGDOM PROTISTA short film/Video (ANIMATE Arts Council Channel 4)
1995 JAUNT short film Super 8 (Carlton TV / LFVDA)
1994 LA BAS short film (with support of BFI and BBC)
1993 SMART ALEK short film (with Sean Lock) BFI & Channel 4
1991 ACUMEN short film (Channel 4 Arts Council) Short Film
1990 HOI POLLOI short film Super 8/Video (BBC Late Show & The Arts Council)
1988 HUBUBINTHEBAOBABS short film
1987 SELF HEAL short film
1984 KLIPPERTY KLOPP short film Super 8 / Performance