Presented alongside and in conversation with Hetain Patel’s Come As You Really Are, is Andy Holden’s 2021–22 installation Cat-tharsis.
Comprising of a looped video piece and 200 ceramic cats, Cat-tharsis offers another way in which we can consider the impulses behind why and what we collect. The artist inherited the ceramic cats from his late Grandmother and the 17min film, narrated by the artist sees him unboxing and introducing us to some of the cats from this collection.
Weaving together stories about the cat as a symbol from Ancient Egypt to its present-day position as a star of the Internet along with personal reflections on his Grandmother and the life that she led Cat-tharsis offers a humorous and poignant exploration of the compulsion to collect.