Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape

2016
Holden, Andy
Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (2011–16) is the result of artist and musician Andy Holden’s five-year project on the laws of physics in cartoons. Holden, who describes the work as ‘a lecture on cartoons, and also a cartoon lecture’, acts as our guide through an animated landscape populated by well-known characters including Bugs Bunny and Wile E Coyote. Drawing on the work of Greek philosophers and Stephen Hawking, Holden identifies and unpicks ten laws of cartoon physics, the first of which is that ‘anybody suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation’. Holden, who first learnt to draw by copying cartoons, argues that ‘the golden age of cartoons’ offered ‘a prophetic glimpse’ into the world in which we live. Studying them, he suggests, will help us better understand the events of our contemporary landscape, not least the 2008 financial crisis and President Donald Trump.
  • Artwork Details: running time: 57 minutes
  • Edition: 7 of 7 + exhibition copy
  • Material description: Two-channel video with vinyl wall text
  • Credit line: © the artist
  • Theme:
  • Medium: Film and Audio Visual
  • Accession number: ACC29/2016

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The Arts Council Collection is the UK's most widely seen collection of modern and contemporary art.

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