Lee Holden’s practice takes the form of elaborately constructed sculptural works and complex installations. Employing a wide range of fabricated and found materials – reconfigured computers, telecommunications equipment, industrial furniture, reworked video footage – his site-specific installations exploit the performative and poetic quality of technological materiality. Holden reinscribes the values and implications of this source material, rendering its naturalised meanings problematic and open to dispute.

Known for his work with performance, sound and the moving image, Holden deliberately draws out the normally suppressed connections between mental illness, violence, poverty and the celebrated aspirations associated with the values of Neoliberalism. He critically examines the psychopathological operations of advertising, social media, broadcast news, reality TV, the National Lottery, and other stereotypical forms of address. The work lays bare the fundamental contradictions inherent in their production and presentation.

Building on a vast archive of found and sourced material collected by the artist over many years, Holden’s recent practice focuses upon the fragile infrastructure and technology of governance, the political consequences of sabotage, and resistance to forced technological advancement. He draws on the literature of scientific romance, and on notions of escape and transition and their material depiction, referencing these means and methods in his own work, considering their complex effects.