Andy Holden - Collected Free Labour: Blog Interviews 2010-2021

This publication contains selected extracts from interviews with artist Andy Holden undertaken between 2010-2021. Previously existing online, central fragments of these Q&A blog's have been rearranged thematically and intercut with a new conversation between the artist and the book's editor Tyler Woolcott. With virtual or electronic information famously offering an insecure and impermanent context for knowledge - web pages disappear and are often deleted on a whim - one motivation for this publication is to produce a lasting and stable location for Holden's ideas, as well as his written and verbal exchanges in printed form. Another impetus is to create a conversation or extended dialogue that operates as a critical artwork in its own right, one that has developed over an eleven-year period with multiple participants, and contains an essence of Holden's work as it has grown and advanced. Speaking in 2021 on his ongoing self-reflective practice, Holden states that: 'It's urgent and perhaps more acceptable to be sincere as a regular mode of being'. This is especially evident within 'the climate of intense sincerity dominated by identity politics, moral certainty and climate uncertainty'. Collected Free Labour: Blog Interviews 2010-2021 has been published to coincide with British Art Show 9, an exhibition that includes Holden's work and travels from Aberdeen to Wolverhampton, Manchester and Plymouth during 2021 and 2022.