Andrew Kötting (born 16 December 1959) is a British artist, writer, and filmmaker. 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 Iain Sinclair FRSL (born 11 June 1943) is a writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, recently within the influences of psychogeography. Early life and education Sinclair was born in Cardiff, Wales, on 11 June 1943. From 19 ...

Jem Finer Jeremy Max Finer (born 25 July 1955) is an English musician, artist and composer. He is one of the founding members of the Pogues. Early life Finer was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England, the son of political scientist Samuel Finer, and the nephew ...

and his daughter Eden Kötting. He is currently a Professor of Time Based Media at the

University for the Creative Arts The University for the Creative Arts is a specialist art and design university in Southern England. It was formed in 2005 as University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester when the Kent Institu ...

Canterbury.

Early life

Kötting was born in

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

on 16 December 1959. He studied BA Fine Art at the

Ravensbourne College of Art and Design Ravensbourne University London is a public university on the Greenwich Peninsula in London, England. It is classified as a digital media and design university, with vocational courses in fashion, television and broadcasting, interactive produc ...

in 1984 and MA in Mixed Media at the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

in 1988.

Life and career

Kötting released '' Gallivant'', his first feature-length film, in 1996. It premièred at the

Edinburgh Film Festival The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), established in 1947, is the world's oldest continually running film festival. EIFF presents both UK and international films (all titles are World, international, European or UK Premieres), in al ...

, where it won the

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

Best New Director prize. Kötting released his second feature, '' This Filthy Earth'', in 2001. It was loosely adapted from

Émile Zola Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, ; ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of Naturalism (literature), naturalism, and an important contributor to ...

's novel ''

La Terre (''The Earth'') is a novel by Émile Zola, published in 1887. It is the fifteenth novel in Zola's '' Rougon-Macquart'' series. The action takes place in a rural community in the Beauce, an area in central France west of Paris. The novel is conn ...

''. 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. 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 and Ireland. Gareth Evans, Curator,

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

, 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

*'' Klipperty Klopp'' (1984) *'' Gallivant'' (1996) *''This Filthy Earth'' (2001) *''Mapping Perception'' (2002) *''In the Wake of Deadad'' (2006) *''Ivul'' (2009) *''Louyre: This Our Still Life'' (2011) *'' Swandown'' (2012) *''By Our Selves'' (2015) *''Lek and the Dogs'' (2017) *'' Edith Walks'' (2017) *'' The Whalebone Box'' (2019) *''Diseased and Disorderly'' (2021) – short film with Eden Kotting, Glenn Whiting and Isabelle Skinner *''Nowness Experiments: Diseased and Disorderly''

Performances

* 2013 ''Swandown'', with

, 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,

Colchester Arts Centre Colchester Arts Centre is an arts centre in Colchester, Essex, which is located in a former Church of England parish church, the church of Saint Mary-at-the-Walls, a name derived from its proximity to the Camulodunum#Walls, Roman town walls. The ...

, Whitechapel Gallery and

Oxford Brookes University Oxford Brookes University (OBU; formerly known as Oxford Polytechnic) is a public university, public university in Oxford, England. It is a new university, having received university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. Th ...

. * 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. * 2025 ''Hastings father-daughter duo host groundbreaking VR experience''

Publications

Publications by Kötting

* ''Swandown''. With Iain Sinclair. Badbloodandsibyl, 2013. . * ''By Our Selves''. With

, Dr Simon Kovesi,

Toby Jones Toby Edward Heslewood Jones''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com (born 7 September 1966) is an English actor. He is known for his extensive character actor roles on stage and screen. From 1989 ...

and

Alan Moore Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', ''The Ballad of Halo Jones'', Swamp Thing (comic book), ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman: The Killing Joke' ...

. Badbloodandsibyl, 2015. . * ''Edith (The Cronicles)''. With Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore. Badbloodandsibyl, 2016. * ''Earthworks''. Badbloodandsibyl, 2018. . * ''The Tell Tale Rooms''. Badbloodandsibyl, 2024. . * ''Blabbermind''. Badbloodandibyl, 2025. . * ''Quantum Shenanigans & Gravitational To-Dos Downyönder in a Place of Energy & Wonder just before the precarious thereafter''. Badbloodandsibyl, 2021. .

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. .

Publications with content about Kötting

* ''Artists' Moving Image in Britain Since 1989''. Yale University Press, 2019. With a chapter on Kötting. * ''A Jaunt: Director Andrew Kötting talks Gallivant.'' * ''An Andrew Kotting Appreciation''. * ''Eccentric, romantic, anarchic; Andrew Kötting'' * ''Andrew Kotting; Voyages of an English Visionary''.

References

External links

*
Where to begin with Andrew Kötting
BFI {{DEFAULTSORT:Kotting, Andrew 1960 births British film directors Living people Artists from Kent British male screenwriters Academics of the University for the Creative Arts Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Alumni of Ravensbourne University London