Holiday was active in the second wave of the Black British art movement, undertaking large-scale figurative mixed-media drawings. The Hum of History, in charcoal and chalk, was "a cyclic story about hope in the 80s". Her work was exhibited in major 1980s black British art exhibitions including Creation for Liberation, Some of us are Brave, Black Art: Plotting the Course and Black Perspectives.[1]
She directed the short video Employing the Image (1989) as part of the Arts Council Black Arts Video Project featuring the work of contemporary black visual artists Sonia Boyce, Simone Alexander, Zarina Bhimji, Keith Piper and Allan deSouza. Holiday directed shorts including Umbrage funded by Arts Council/C4, Miss Queencake as part of BFI New Directors and Manao Tupapau funded by Arts Council/BBC.[1]Miss Queencake was shown at the Torino Film Festival.[4] It tells the story of a mixed-race teenager, Bira, from the North of England married off to a white boatman. Embarking on her honeymoon, Bira escapes the racism of her everyday life by constructing a fantasy world in which she is a princess.[5]Manao Tupapau looked at the experience of Merahi metua no Tehamana modelling for Paul Gauguin in Tahiti.[6]
From 2001 to 2010 Holiday lived in Cape Town, writing and directing several educational television series.[3]
Some of Us are Brave, Black Art Gallery, 1986. With Simone Alexander, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Mowbray Odonkor, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter. [10]
Creation for Liberation 4th Open Exhibition: Contemporary Art by Black Artists. Brixton Village, London. 1987. With Achar Kumar Burman, Margaret Cooper, Zil Hoque, and Fitzroy Sang.[7]
Umbrage, Bedford Hill Gallery, solo show 1987
Black Perspectives, South London Gallery 1987. With Simone Alexander, Mowbray Odonkor et al [12]
The Room Next to Mine. Bedford Hill Gallery, 1988. With Simone Alexander.[8]
Progress Reports, Art in an era of Diversity, INIVA 2010. With Manick Govinda, Karen Alexander, Zarina Bhimji, Kara Walker, Julie Dash and Harold Offeh et al.[13]
Films
Babel, 1988.
Employing the Image - Making Space for Ourselves, 1989.
Umbrage, 1990.
Miss Queencake, 1991.
Manao Tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Watches), 1993. watch on YouTube
The Curtain, 1992
Writing
The Art Poems. Akashic Books, 2018. Chapbook. Included in Kwame Dawes; Chris Abani, eds. (2018). New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set: Tamo. New York: Akashic Books.[10]
^Griselda Pollock (1994). "Territories of Desire: reconsiderations of an African childhood". In George Robertson; Melinda Mash; Lisa Tickner; Jon Bird; Barry Curtis; Tim Putnam (eds.). Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement. Routledge. p. 84.
^The Room Next to Mine: Work by Amanda Holiday and Simone Alexander. London: Bedford Hill Gallery, 1988. Cited in Celeste-Marie Bernier (2018). Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965–2015. University of California Press. p. 308.
^Currah, Mark (1–8 June 1989). "Black Art: Plotting the Course". City Limits.
