Amanda Beech

Amanda Beech is an artist and writer. Her work takes up the dynamic of image-force, through entangling narratives of power from philosophical theory, literature and real political events. Inspired by these discourses on power, her work proposes a new realist politics of the artwork and its possibilities in the context of contingency. The work has focused on the rhetorical force of the image as a substantive object and how this allows a re-thinking of the terms by which we name art’s critique in the context of contingency. Her art work in video, print and sculpture has taken up this notion of force through entangling narratives of power and agency from philosophical theory, noir-ish narratives of TV shows like 24, CSI, the hard-boiled writing of James Ellroy and real political events. Inspired by these discourses on power in the context of groundlessness her work examines and produces the condition of language as force – and the force of language. Beech has exhibited her art work internationally; recent exhibitions include: All Obstructing Walls Have Been Broken Down, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, R of Ireland, Final Machine 2013, featuring in Agitationaism, the Irish Biennial and L’avenir the Montreal Biennale 2014, also shown as a solo exhibit at Lanchester Gallery Projects, Coventry, UK and Ha Gamle Prestagard, Norway, 2013; Asymmetrical Cinema, Beaconsfield Gallery, London; and, (Past Present) Future Tense, Center for Living Arts, Alabama, USA 2013. Recent publications include; Final Machine, Urbanomic, 2013; Sanity Assassin, Urbanomic, 2010 and new essays for the anthologies, Realism, Materialism, Art, Sternberg Press, 2014, Speculative Aesthetics, Urbanomic, 2014 and The Flood of Rights, Merve, 2014. Beech also regularly speaks at conferences and symposia including keynotes for “Generative Constraints”, London, 2013 and “Exhibiting Video”, London, 2012. She is Dean of Critical Studies at CalArts, USA.

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Amanda Beech