Amelia Tan

About

Amelia Tan is an artist based in London working mainly with performance and film. Her work is initiated through filmed observations of everyday behaviour. These videos then inform the choreography of reenacted and fragmented movement, predominantly developed through workshops. Using performance, Tan reflects on both the bizarre and commonplace ways that people behave in public space. Interested in the façade and etiquette we employ in public, she strives to make visible the unconscious movements that shape our relationship to the materials and structures of the modern world. 

In 2017, Tan founded a performance company with a group of over 60s in Edinburgh. They met monthly for workshops and devised six performances together. Her film The On+on Company which documented the process of starting the group was nominated for the TENT Academy Foreign Film Award, Rotterdam in 2018. She was also invited to conduct a performance workshop in a Scottish prison in association with Talbot Rice Gallery.

Education

In June 2018, Tan graduated from the Intermedia department at Edinburgh College of Art and was awarded the ECA Graduate Bursary Award. This award was a three month residency at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Over the course of the residency, she devised a promenade performance on a cycle path with a group of HND students from Edinburgh College. In 2017, Tan also spent six months studying at Vilnius Academy of Art, Lithuania.

Selected Exhibitions

2018 – When did she become such a sun rat? Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, UK
2018 – Trading Zones, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
2018 – The Green Room, Dornoch St Project Space, Glasgow, UK
2017 – Apple Bobbing (2018) Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
2017 – Remains, ŠČ Gallery, Vilnius, LT
2017 – After School Activites, Gallery 23, Edinburgh, UK

In partnership with Národní filmový archiv, Melešická 12, 130 00 Praha (CS)

Date of residency 1. 8.–30. 9. 2019

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