Linus: ‘You tore up the horse I drew.’

Lucy: ‘I tore it up because it had no artistic value...’

Linus: ‘No artistic value? I worked for forty-five minutes drawing that horse.’

Lucy: ‘A true work of art takes at least an hour!’

Philistine, but she’s right in her way. Though I was never fond of Lucy (I don’t think you’re meant to be). A screen-print of this Peanuts exchange greets you when you walk into the lower level of Andy Holden’s current exhibition at Kettle’s Yard; a rambling, meanderingly discursive essay in self-made and self-decorated objects.

Developed from a series of discussions with the late curator Dan Cox, this exhibition is, for starters, a decidedly homely affair. One could even call it cosy. Many of the exhibited objects exude a kind of ornamental charm—they are the products of the eccentric English recluse. Stalagmites in layers of coloured plaster; bowls, bottles, books, desks. And display of nests (Holden gives Lectures on Nesting with his ornithologist father Peter, and will be discussing birdsong on the 18th June). Twitchers, pot, and marshmallowy hillocks. Pot in particular—Holden testifies to wandering round the Kettle’s Yard house high, noticing the inexplicable Thinglyness of things. Yes, of course.

As well as this is evident cartoonish whimsy—Peanuts is everywhere—and a kind of sweet-shop ethic. Things are squashy and approachable; chewy. And, incidentally, steal-able: I was overcome with an overwhelming urge to nick one of the many deliciously arty books (maybe some Guattari, or Lacan perhaps) available to peruse in the lower ‘library’ level of the exhibition. We’re used to multi-coloured nefariousness—and, indeed, Theory riffing—from other Goldsmiths grads, but this has a kind of small-town innocence that could only have been developed in, and for, ‘the regions’ (Holden was born in Bedford, and is an old familiar of Kettle’s Yard).

Still, as one often comes to expect with these things, it is a faux innocence. The loss of curator Dan Cox (killed while cycling in early 2010) is pregnant. Central to the exhibition is Flaubert’s unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet, unfinished due to authorial expiration. The novel exposes two copy-clerks’ forays into nearly everything (science, archaeology, philosophy); extracts are printed on the library’s carpets; the analogue with Holden and Cox is clear. The exhibition also recalls the Kettle’s Yard house itself which, too, is permanently pregnant due to the loss of its former resident and de facto curator, Jim Ede. Additionally, Holden’s whimsical artistic tribute to his departed friend makes, poignantly, rather a mockery of other familiarly death-obsessed contemporary artists-cum-PR-men (ie. Hirst, and the Chapman brothers, naming no names).

In any case, exhibition-as-tribute is only an unfortunate by-product of unforeseen circumstances; indeed the show is really attempting to grapple at something rather more deep. Whether it actually succeeds in doing this is moot. I feel rather pained criticising the show considering its genesis—who wouldn’t?—but then again this isn’t a show that wears its unfortunate genesis story ‘on its sleeve’, as it were. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t testify to all that much a ‘connection’ (it’s a horrible word but it’ll have to do) with the works on display. They have a concerted, ensemble-like cartoonishness: Holden certainly is creating a kind of alternative world; a ‘chewy cosmos’ (hmm). One poster sets out the ‘Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape’—law VII, for example: ‘certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot’.

But at the same time it is dedicated to an understanding—if ever there was a noble pursuit—of  the nature of time itself. Time, and its linkages with the objects that find themselves to be in existence (what it is like for time to be ‘Thingly’). The aforementioned stalagmites, which look like something lifted from a Krazy Kat strip, take hours upon hours of studio time to form; they are sliced to reveal truly geological layers. Lucy’s above aesthetic tenet is vindicated. Well, presumably.

But anyway, whether or not the material on display was to my taste is, admittedly, irrelevant (I have a habit of unfairly baulking at things that are unashamedly colourful; and I’ve never been fond of sweet-shops). Still, this is a rich and multi-faceted show with many inviting lines of enquiry. And, of course, if you don’t like it you can always steal a book.