Andrew Kötting

Andrew Kötting (born 16 December 1959) is a British artist, writer, and filmmaker.

Kötting at an event for his Swandown film, in 2011

He made numerous experimental short films, which were awarded prizes at international film festivals. Gallivant, was his first feature film, a road/home film about his four-month journey around the coast of the UK, with his grandmother Gladys and his daughter Eden. Gallivant won the Channel 4 Prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival for Best Director and the Golden Ribbon Award in Rimini (Italy). In 2011 the film was voted number 49 in Best British Film of all time by Time Out.

Kötting has frequently collaborated with Iain Sinclair,^[1][2] Jem Finer and his daughter Eden Kötting. He is currently a Professor of Time Based Media at the University for the Creative Arts Canterbury.^[3]

Early life

Kötting was born in Kent on 16 December 1959.^[4][5] He studied BA Fine Art at the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in 1984 and MA in Mixed Media at the Slade School of Art in 1988.^[6]

Life and career

Kötting released Gallivant, his first feature-length film, in 1996.^[7] It premièred at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where it won the Channel 4 Best New Director prize.^[8] Kötting released his second feature, This Filthy Earth,^[9] in 2001.^[5] It was loosely adapted from Émile Zola's novel La Terre.^[9]

In July 2010, Kötting was an artist-in-residence at the La Rochelle International Film Festival in south-west France, creating work and collaborating with the photographer Sebastian Edge.^[10] In 2011 he directed This Our Still Life, which premièred at the Venice Film Festival and was acquired by the BFI for distribution in the UK^[11] and Ireland.^[12]

Gareth Evans,^[13] Curator, Whitechapel Gallery, called Kötting one of Britain's most intriguing artists, 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 forty 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 nine 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."

Filmography

• Gallivant (1996)^[4]
• This Filthy Earth (2001)^[5]
• Mapping Perception (2002)^[5]
• In the Wake of Deadad (2006)^[14]
• Ivul (2009)^[4][15]
• Louyre: This Our Still Life (2011)^[4]
• Swandown (2012)^[16]
• By Our Selves (2015)^[17]
• Lek and the Dogs (2017)^[18]
• Edith Walks (2017)^[19][20]
• The Whalebone Box (2019)

Performances

• 2013 Swandown, with Iain Sinclair, Jem Finer, Kirsten Norrie at Shoreline Literature Festival Aldeburgh, Dilston Grove London
• 2015 By Our Selves, with Sinclair, Norrie, Finer and David Aylward at Dilston Grove, Battersea Arts Centre, Whitechapel Gallery, Colchester Arts Centre, Whitechapel Gallery and Oxford Brookes University.
• 2016 Edith, with Claudia Barton at Electric Spring Huddersfield University.
• 2016 Edith, with Sinclair, Finer, Aylward, and Barton at Root 1066 Arts Festival, Hastings.
• 2017 Edith, with Barton at Alchemy Festival Hawick, Scottish Borders.
• 2017 Edith, with Sinclair, Finer, Aylward, Barton, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne.^[21]

Publications

Publications by Kötting

• Swandown. With Iain Sinclair. Badbloodandsibyl, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9568733-30.
• By Our Selves. With Iain Sinclair, Dr Simon Kovesi, Toby Jones and Alan Moore. Badbloodandsibyl, 2015. ISBN 978-0-9568733-61.
• Edith (The Cronicles). With Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore. Badbloodandsibyl, 2016. ISBN 978-0-9568733-4-7
• Earthworks. Badbloodandsibyl, 2018. ISBN 978-0-9568733-7-8.

Publications with contributions by Kötting

• The Unwanted Sound of Everything we Think we Want. Kötting contributes a chapter in Documentary Film and the Listening Experience. University of Huddersfield Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1-86218-156-4.

Publications with content about Kötting

• Artists' Moving Image in Britain Since 1989. Yale University Press, 2019. With a chapter on Kötting.

References

1. "Edith Walks - Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair and their band of Mummers". the lost byway. 22 June 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
2. "Swandown (Dual Format Edition)". shop.bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 31 August 2021. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
3. "University for the Creative Arts - Kotting Professor Andrew - UCA". Retrieved 3 July 2017.
4. Sandhu, Sukhdev (18 November 2011). "Scenes from Andrew Kötting's life". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 3 July 2017.
5. "BFI Screenonline: Kötting, Andrew (1958-) Biography". Retrieved 3 July 2017.
6. "Andrew Kotting - Works, Articles, Clips and Stills | Luxonline". Retrieved 3 July 2017.
7. Evans, Gareth (Summer 2007). "VERTIGO | Andrew Kötting's Gallivant". Vertigo. Close-Up Film Centre. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
8. "Buy Gallivant - Gallivant". BFI. Archived from the original on 8 September 2015. Retrieved 4 July 2017. Gallivant scooped the Best New Director Award at its Edinburgh Film Festival premiere.
9. GA (10 September 2012). "This Filthy Earth, directed by Andrew Kötting | Film review". TimeOut. TimeOut London. Retrieved 4 July 2017. The follow-up to Kötting's road movie/autobiographical essay Gallivant recounts a fictional tale of familial and social strife inspired by Zola's La Terre.
10. "KOTTING AND EDGE LAND New Publication out now - LUX". Lux. 9 February 2012. Retrieved 4 July 2017. collaboration between the artist and film maker, Andrew Kotting and the photographer, Sebastian Edge [who worked] together at La Rochelle in 2010, where Kotting was an artist-in-residence at The Centre Intermondes.
11. "DVD press release - This Our Still Life - A film by Andrew Kötting" (PDF). BFI. 9 February 2012. Retrieved 4 July 2017. This Our Still Life by Andrew Kötting ... Premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival and released in cinemas by the BFI
12. "University for the Creative Arts - KOTTING Professor Andrew - UCA". Retrieved 4 July 2017. 'Louyre - This Our Still Life' premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in competition 2011 and distributed in the UK and Ireland by the BFI.
13. "At Play in the Ideas of the World: Curator Gareth Evans on the films of Mike Dibb". Whitechapel Gallery. 31 January 2021. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
14. "Films - In The Wake Of A Deadad". Retrieved 4 July 2017.
15. Jonathan Romney (October 2009). "Ivul | The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival". BFI. Archived from the original on 11 October 2009. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
16. Rose, Steve (18 July 2012). "Swandown: two men in a pedalo | Film | The Guardian". Guardian. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
17. Bradshaw, Peter (1 October 2015). "By Our Selves review – disturbing journey through John Clare's poetry | Film | The Guardian". Guardian. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
18. "Lek and the Dogs dir. Andrew Kötting – Screen Archive South East". Retrieved 4 July 2017.
19. "Film of the week: Edith Walks makes England loopy again | Sight & Sound". British Film Institute. 23 June 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
20. "Edith Walks review – eccentric trek in pursuit of Englishness". The Guardian. 22 June 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
21. "Andrew Kötting: Who You Walk With Alters What You See". Towner Eastbourne. Retrieved 26 February 2021.

External links

• Andrew Kötting at IMDb