Art / Andrew Kötting
Watershed and Undershed present father and daughter Andrew and Eden Kötting collaboration ‘The Everyworld’
As part of Watershed’s year-long ‘home’ season, its gallery space for immersive and interactive art Undershed will be showing a far-reaching exhibition of work by a father and daughter exploring the theme.
Andrew Kötting is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and artist whose daughter Eden was born with the rare neurological condition Joubert Syndrome, and a likely life expectancy that Andrew describes as “precarious at best”.
Currently sharing a studio in St Leonards-on-Sea, they have been collaborating creatively for the past 25 years, working across genres to document and immortalise “a joyous collision of visions, fragments and memories” of their lives.
Andrew & Eden Kötting
Described by lead curator Amy Rose as “irreverent, deep and inspiring”, The Everyworld is a special exhibition of the duo’s work that brings together an eclectic variety of pieces including short films, costumes, objects, sketches and hand-made books showcasing their distinctive style.
At its centre are two specific works: a 15-minute VR experience set in and around Louvyre, their Pyrenean family farmhouse, and In the Wake of a Deadad, in which two inflatables of Andrew’s father and grandfather, the ‘Deadads’ are accompanied by film of the figures taken at places of emotional significance to the family.
Eden Kötting: Always Finding Fault
Together, the exhibition functions as “an archaeological deep dig into the creative heart of Kötting family life, celebrating the creative spirit, grief and togetherness”.
Following the exhibition, a season of screenings at Watershed will continue to look at the prevailing themes of family, imagination, disability and neurodiversity so prevalent in Andrew and Eden’s collaborations.
A still from ‘Mapping Perception’
Heading up a programme of shorts on March 12, Mapping Perception features Eden in an investigation of how humanity perceives difference, as well as Diseased and Disorderly, a film delving into her artistic practice.
A fortnight later, The Memory Blocks looks at the fragility of memory and recall, specifically through the lens of Eden’s experience, and that of her fellow artists at the Project Artworks collective.
A still from The Memory Blocks
Completing the Everyworld season is By Our Selves, featuring actor Toby Jones, author Iain Sinclair and a giant straw bear (played by Andrew, who directs).
Described as “a psycho-geographical excursion”, it follows in the footsteps of a four-day pilgrimage by the 19th century English poet John Clare. Absconding from an Epping Forest asylum, Clare walked 80 miles north under the delusion that he was married to a former love, who had in fact died three years earlier.
All screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Andrew Kötting.
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The Everyworld Exhibition runs at Undershed from January 23-February 19, after a special launch event on January 22.
The Everyworld Season continues until April 7 at Watershed with Mapping Perception (a programme of short films) on March 12, The Memory Blocks on March 28, and By Ourselves on April 7. All three screenings will feature a post-show Q&A with Andrew Kötting.
To find out more and buy tickets to all events, visit www.watershed.co.uk.
All photos: Andrew and Eden Kötting
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