Here’s some fresh and truly exciting news from the art world! The respected gallery Felix & Spear has announced with great pleasure that they now represent Amanda Holiday, an artist whose practice consistently pushes boundaries. Her journey across multiple disciplines is genuinely inspiring.
So, who is this remarkable talent? Born in Sierra Leone in 1964 and moving to northern England at the age of five, Holiday’s path began to take shape with her Fine Art training at Wimbledon School of Art. In the 1980s, she was right at the heart of the Black Arts Movement in the UK, exhibiting her work in groundbreaking Black art shows long before stepping behind the camera.
When she did pick up the camera, she told powerful stories. In 1989, she directed the Arts Council-supported documentary Employing the Image, which shone a light on the lives and work of five young Black British artists, including Sonia Boyce and Zarina Bhimji. This was followed by her striking one-minute short film Manao Tupapau — a reimagining of a Gauguin painting from the model’s perspective — and the BFI-backed experimental drama Miss Queencake, which reworks episodes from Gauguin’s life through an anti-colonial lens. After this prolific period, Holiday lived in Cape Town from 2001 to 2010, where she made significant contributions to educational television.
More recent achievements have been equally impressive. Her powerful 1987 drawing Red Riding Hood became a standout piece in the Women in Revolt! exhibition, which traveled from Tate Britain in 2024 to the Whitworth in Manchester in 2025. In the same year, she completed a UKRI travel research bursary at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, further expanding her academic and artistic vision. We admired her works in the group shows Bloom Song and Gloam, presented by Vivienne Roberts Projects, and her drawing The Sense continues to be exhibited at the Courtauld’s East Wing Biennial until 2027. Even more exciting: she has been selected as one of the two artists representing the United Kingdom at the 2026 Malta Biennale!
Alongside this prolific creative output, Holiday continues to pursue her intellectual passion for art. She is currently completing her PhD on Poetry, Race and Art at the University of Brighton. With her interdisciplinary brilliance shining through, we will be following Amanda Holiday’s new journey with Felix & Spear with great anticipation and delight!
