The Zabludowicz Collection in North London is is presenting a solo exhibition of new work by UK-based artist Andy Holden. The culmination of an 18-month collaboration with the Collection, the exhibition is Holden’s most ambitious project to date, and will explore the history and legacy of MI!MS (Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity), an art movement founded in 2003 by Holden and a group of friends in their hometown of Bedford before any of them had undertaken any formal art training.
Taking over the entirety of the Zabludowicz Collection’s London exhibition space, Towards a Unified Theory of MI!MS will feature a single vast three-storey sculpture, containing life-size replicas of environments that were important in the formation of the movement. These rooms will be filled with hundreds of works in different media, including original artworks made by the MI!MS members, new works based on unrealised ideas of the group, a series of films and sound works produced via interviews with those involved in the movement, and dramatic reconstructions of key moments of the movement’s history played by teenagers from Bedford. The exhibition’s soundtrack is composed from the original music of MI!MS re-arranged for and performed by a children’s orchestra and choir.
The challenge of representing collective memory is a central concern of the project, alongside questions surrounding the influence of history and nostalgia on our understanding of the past, as well as the way it structures the present. The show will attempt to construct an idiosyncratic archeology of MI!MS through a systematic exploration of the group’s adolescent debate about the relationship between irony and sincerity in art production and the grand gesture of writing and signing a manifesto. The work attempts to be both about MI!MS as well as a new work of MI!MS as prescribed by the manifesto.
ANDY HOLDEN MAXIMUM IRONY! MAXIMUM SINCERITY, 1999-2003: TOWARDS A UNIFIED THEORY OF MI!MS
26 SEPTEMBER-15 DECEMBER 2013
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