A M A N D A   B E E C H

 17 October – 22 November 2014

Private view: Thursday 16 October, 7 – 9pm

Artist talk: Thursday 16 October, 6 – 7pm at Catalyst Arts

 Catalyst Arts is pleased to present the first solo presentation in Northern Ireland of the work of British-born, California-based artist and writerAmanda Beech.

Amanda Beech’s artwork and writing investigate the condition of lawlessness, contingency and instability when imagined as a natural state of the human condition, looking to how we can now understand politics, agency and power in this context. Her 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.

Beech’s 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 such as 24 and 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 is co-director of the Political Currency of Art Research Group and is Dean of Critical Studies at CalArts, California, USA. Recent exhibitions include: Final Machine, featured in the EVA international, Limerick, 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.