Lecture on Nesting (Edinburgh Central Library/Collective Gallery)
- Artist: Andy Holden
- Date: 2012
- Medium: Screenprint on paper
- Dimensions: image: 508 x 390 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Lecture on Nesting” by Andy Holden, a 2012 screenprint that turns a black‑and‑white illustration of a weaver bird and its nest into a visual invitation to a talk. The image comes from drawings archived at Bristol Museum, and the print was made with Collective Gallery in Edinburgh for Holden’s solo show “Landscape and Folly.” The poster commemorates the first filmed version of Holden’s lecture, co‑presented with his father, ornithologist Peter Holden—an event that later inspired the 2017 video *A Natural History of Nest Building*. The lecture itself was performed in Penzance, Cornwall in 2012 and at Performa 13 in New York in 2013, offering a dialogue between the scientific and the artistic, a theme Holden revisits in his video work. The screenprint is one of roughly twenty made for each performance, and Tate holds the fifth of a twenty‑five edition. It reflects Holden’s ongoing practice of creating limited‑edition posters to promote live events, bridging the gap between visual art and performance. The piece invites viewers to consider how a bird’s nest can be both a biological structure and a poetic sculpture, echoing the dual perspective Holden and his father bring to the discussion.
See it in person
Lecture on Nesting (Edinburgh Central Library/Collective Gallery) is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
