Amanda Beech is an artist and writer. Her work proposes a new realist politics of the artwork and its possibilities in the context of contingency and neo-rationalist conceptions of power. Recent solo shows include: Covenant Transport, Move or Die, Baltic Museum, UK, 2016; All Obstructing Walls Have Been Broken Down, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, N Ireland, 2014; and Everything Has Led to this Moment, Xero, Kline, Coma, London, UK 2014.
Her video installation, Final Machine, was presented at Lanchester Gallery Projects, UK, HaGamle Prestagard, Norway, and featured in Agitationism, the 2014 Irish Biennial curated by Bassam El Barnoi and L’Avenir, and the Montreal Biennale, curated by Peggy Gale and Gregory Burke, 2014, where Beech has also contributed catalogue essays for each catalogue.
Other solo exhibits have included Sanity Assassin 2010 (a video exploring LA modernism), exhibited at Spike Island, Bristol, Tate Britain, London and Beaconsfield Gallery, London, and Statecraft an Arts Council commission exploring Fredrick Gibberd’s architectural master-plan for Harlow New Town, exhibited in Harlow, UK and DNA Gallery, Berlin. 2008. Recent group exhibits include Propositions for A Stage: 24 Frames of a Beautiful Heaven, Lasalle Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore, curated by Bridget Crone and What Hope Looks Like After Hope, Beruit City Forum, curated by Bassam El Baroni, 2015.
Her artist’s books include First Machine, Final Machine, 2015 (Urbanomic Press) Sanity Assassin 2010 (Urbanomic Press), and Final Machine (Urbanomic Press) 2013. Other critical writing on art, critique and realism includes, ‘Culture Without Mirrors’, Glass Bead, Castilia: The Game of Ends and Means, 2016, ‘Space is No Object’ in Re-Inventing Horizons, 2016; ‘Concept Without Difference, the Promise of the Generic’ in Realism, Materialism, Art, 2014; ‘Last Rights, The Non Tragic Image and the Law’ in The Flood of Rights, Sternberg, 2014; and, ‘Curatorial Futures with the image: Overcoming Scepticism and Unbinding the Relational’ Journal of Visual Arts Practice, Volume 9.2: pp. 139-151, Intellect, 2011.
She is contributing co-editor to the anthologies Cold War Cold World, 2017, (Urbanomic Press) and Episode, Pleasure and Persuasion in Lens Based Media, 2008 (Artwords). Beech regularly speaks at conferences, and her work can be accessed on you-tube broadcasts. These include Art and Reason: How Art Thinks Parts I and II, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Baltic Museum, 2015-16; and her keynote for Generative Constraints, ‘Art Habit and Rule’, Royal Holloway and Kingston University, UK, Nov, 2013.
A podcast dialogue can be found at Robin Mackay’s Yarncast Project, www.urbanomic.com, and a live radio interview can be found at Talk At Ten, Amanda Beech in conversation with Kate Yolande, Marfa Public Radio. A roundtable discussion on ‘Speculative Materialism’ with Armen Avanessian, Suhail Malik and Robin Mackay can be found in Spike Quarterly, June 2013.
