Amanda Holiday: Dreamery

Amanda Holiday was born in Sierra Leone in 1964 and moved to the north of England at the age of five. She studied Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art and was actively involved in the UK Black arts movement, exhibiting in landmark Black art exhibitions during the 1980s, before transitioning into film. ​ In 1989, she directed the Arts Council–funded documentary Employing the Image, which examines the lives and work of five young Black British artists, including Sonia Boyce and Zarina Bhimji. This was followed by the one-minute film Manao Tupapau, which reanimates a Gauguin painting from the perspective of the model. Her BFI-funded experimental drama Miss Queencake reimagines elements of Gauguin’s life as a decolonial anti-narrative. From 2001 to 2010, Holiday was based in Cape Town, where she worked in educational television. ​ Her 1987 drawing Red Riding Hood was exhibited in Women in Revolt!, which toured from Tate Britain in 2024 to the Whitworth, Manchester, in 2025. In the same year, she undertook a UKRI travel research fellowship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Her artworks have been included in the group exhibitions Bloom Song and Gloam, and her drawing The Sense is currently on view in the Courtauld’s East Wing Biennial until 2027. Holiday has been selected as one of two artists representing the UK at the Malta Biennale 26. ​ She is currently completing a PhD in Poetry, Race and Art at the University of Brighton.