London based artist and poet Amanda Holiday was active in the British Black Art movement of the 1980s and exhibited her artwork in key shows of the time including Some of Us Are Brave, (Black Art Gallery), The Image Employed (Cornerhouse, Manchester) and Black Art, Plotting the Course, (Wolverhampton Art Gallery & tour) before moving into film. Her 1989 Arts Council funded documentary Employing The Image featured the early work of several UK black artists including Sonia Boyce and Zarina Bhimji, while her BFI funded experimental drama Miss Queencake re-imagines a slice of Gauguin’s life as a northern boat movie. In 2001 Holiday moved to South Africa where she worked in educational television.
On her return to the UK with her daughter, Holiday resumed art making and later started writing poetry. Her chapbook The Art Poems was published in 2018 as part of New Generation African Poets and other writing has been published in journals internationally. In 2020 she founded Black Sunflowers Poetry Press with a focus on women and black poets and is currently completing a PhD at the University of Brighton.
Her 1987 drawing ‘Red Riding Hood’ was shown as part of Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain and a recent drawing ‘It is’ was auctioned as part of this year’s Drawing Room Biennial. Holiday is the 2024 recipient of the Peut Guard Artist Award as well as a forthcoming travel fellowship to the Smithsonian (NMAAHC).
