Amanda Knight

06 July 2020

Featured in Deptford X: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019


What are you reading at the moment? 

The Oceans: Lifestream of our Planet, by Keith Critchlow (1972)

What does a typical day look like for you?

I have teaching days and studio days – they kind of dance around each other. I enjoy both – each offers thinking time away from the other. I work to a strict time framework starting at 10am. I nicked this idea from an article by Richard Deacon about his student days at CSM. It has helped me shorten my days and focus.

Describe your studio/workspace

I build up a wall of resources and work with these in sight for a number of weeks, then it all comes down, tabula rasa, some gets stored, some thrown away, some carried forward. It gets quite chaotic and I tend to work with the door shut so that the ungainliness of my process goes unseen!

Where do your best ideas come from?

Diagrams, nature, wordplay, throwaway, V&A.

If Tate called you tomorrow and invited you to make work for the Turbine Hall, what would it be?

A gigantic pour. Teaching has revealed to me that people (with rare exception) seem compelled by this very simple ‘Frankenthaler-ian’ process, the flooding or dispersion of pigment. The irrevocable nature of the stain is one of the ideas at stake, where the pigment fuses with the support. ‘Before’ and ‘After’ participate in a relationship where neither presides.

What is helping you the most during this time?/Plug your next show! 

I have been lucky during lockdown to have interesting exchanges with an artist flat-mate. This undoubtedly kept me going at this time. I also see City Lit students making superb use of WhatsApp groups to self-set projects, create and feed-back to each other. I am inspired and thankful to see how quickly artists network and co-support.

Instagram: @aknightstudio  

Website: www.amandaknight.com

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