Andy Holden (b. 1982 Bedford, U.K) is an artist whose work comprises large installations, sculpture, painting, pop music, performance, animation, curating and multi-screen-videos. His work is often defined by very personal starting points, used to arrive at more abstract philosophical questions, and is often deliberately disjunctive, employing subtle irony, and using one subject matter as a way to talk about something else, creating a narrative assembled through multiple constituent parts. As a teenager Holden wrote a manifesto for art titled “Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity”. For his first exhibition at TATE Britain (2010), he exhibited Pyramid Piece, an enormous knitted rock based on a chunk of pyramid that he stole from the Great Pyramid as a boy. From 2011-2017 Holden worked on Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, an animated film which explored the idea that the world was now best understood as a cartoon. Holden’s work Natural Selection (Artangel, 2017), was made in collaboration with his father Peter Holden. Holden curated Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules at Somerset House (2022-2023). He has released one album and a number of singles under the name The Grubby Mitts.

Following an open call for applications in Autumn 2022, Andy Holden was awarded a 4-week funded residency. Cove Park’s programme of funded residencies support research, the development of existing and new projects, collaboration, interdisciplinary practice, and the production of new work and ideas. All national and international artists, cultural practitioners, and researchers, working individually and collaboratively in all art forms, in the creative industries, and across disciplines, were eligible to apply. Cove Park’s residencies also support individuals at every stage in their careers.

Featured image: Andy Holden, Laws of Motion in. Cartoon Landscape, 2017.