Beautiful Brutalism (National Theatre II) Photograph - Limited Edition of 15

About Me Amelia Lancaster has a degree in architecture and a diploma in set designer. She won a National Set Design Competition to work at the BBC and worked as an Art Director before becoming an artist and photographer. Her first solo exhibition ‘Abstractions; Studies of the National Theatre’ at the Wolfson Gallery, National Theatre has just ended but continues in the LFA awards in Porto. This was published in The Observer newspaper, Architects Journal and The Guardian. Mainly shot on 35mm film this work transforms the concrete architecture of the Southbank through spatial abstraction; contrast and colours are manipulated to accentuate shapes and structure, creating new concrete compositions and ambiguous spaces. Colour is used to flatten the image and negative space is also explored to locate latent configurations beyond the human eye. Between 2017 -2021 she was Artist in Residence for the London Borough of Brent where she documented the urban transformation of South Kilburn during an extensive period of regeneration through access to the demolition, and construction sites. This combined her interests in Brutalist Architecture and Modernist Housing Estates. Recent work from these endeavours was exhibited at The London Festival of Architecture, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Ashurst Emerging Artist Exhibition. Amelia’s work has also been shown at The Proud Gallery and The Courtauld Institute East Wing Biennial. In 2019 Amelia was commissioned by Brent Council to take a series of portraits to celebrate the lives of Brent tenants for The Addison Act Centenary commemorating 100 years of council homes and the start of social housing. These were exhibited at the Brent Civic Centre with The Chartered Institute of Housing. Her personal portraits have also been exhibited (Der Greif Guest Room curated by Joshua Chuang and Barney Kulok’ and Re:Production at Open Eye Gallery). These create emotional narratives from relationships which feel intrusive rather than intimate and explore the nature of co-dependence.