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Emily Speed
Emily Speed (born 1979, Chester) is an artist based in Liverpool. Her practice spans drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image and performance. It explores the relationship between architecture and the human body. Speed has shown her work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool) and Tate St Ives, among other places. She has been shortlisted for the Liverpool Art Prize and the Northern Art Prize.
Speed gained a BA (Hons) in Drawing & Painting from Edinburgh College of Art in 2001 and an MA in Fine Art: Drawing from University of the Arts London: Wimbledon College of Art in 2006.
Emily Speed’s work explores the relationship between buildings and bodies. She is interested in how we inhabit and are sheltered by architecture, both physically and psychologically, describing the way in which people are "shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space." She is drawn to the parts of buildings less often dwelt in: recesses, corners, stairs, passageways, entrances and exits.
Speed's practice encompasses small and large-scale sculpture and installation, from tiny hand-made dwellings, to larger manufactured interventions in architectural space.
Much of her sculptural and installation work is site-specific, considering not only the building within which the work is shown, its architecture and its history, but also the locality of that building. For example, in 'Mattdress & Drawers' (2011), created at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Speed used the furniture from the old halls of residence at what used to be Bretton College (a teacher training college), to reveal a forgotten part of the history of the building and its former occupants. At Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, she created the site-specific work 'Nothing is Finished, Nothing is Perfect, Nothing Lasts' (2012), a sculpture that was integrated into the walls of the building to make it look as if it was unfolding at the edges.
Several of Speed's installations create small spaces into which the viewer can enter. Examples include 'Reading Room (Box Man)' (2011) and 'Lady Garden' (2013).
Speed cites the work 'Inhabitant' (2009), created during a residency at the Atelierhaus Salzamt, as an important turning point in her practice. A higgledy-piggledy architectural costume made from recycled cardboard, 'Inhabitant' allowed Speed to realise that "if the body is actually in the work then it’s a totally different kind of practice", which transformed her approach and "led to every other work since.”
Speed began to work with performers in 2012, with the work 'Human Castle', performed by ten acrobats in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. She worked again with acrobats in 'Build Up' (2013), exploring the balance and endurance of the human body to create and collapse architecture-like structures.
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Emily Speed
Emily Speed (born 1979, Chester) is an artist based in Liverpool. Her practice spans drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image and performance. It explores the relationship between architecture and the human body. Speed has shown her work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool) and Tate St Ives, among other places. She has been shortlisted for the Liverpool Art Prize and the Northern Art Prize.
Speed gained a BA (Hons) in Drawing & Painting from Edinburgh College of Art in 2001 and an MA in Fine Art: Drawing from University of the Arts London: Wimbledon College of Art in 2006.
Emily Speed’s work explores the relationship between buildings and bodies. She is interested in how we inhabit and are sheltered by architecture, both physically and psychologically, describing the way in which people are "shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space." She is drawn to the parts of buildings less often dwelt in: recesses, corners, stairs, passageways, entrances and exits.
Speed's practice encompasses small and large-scale sculpture and installation, from tiny hand-made dwellings, to larger manufactured interventions in architectural space.
Much of her sculptural and installation work is site-specific, considering not only the building within which the work is shown, its architecture and its history, but also the locality of that building. For example, in 'Mattdress & Drawers' (2011), created at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Speed used the furniture from the old halls of residence at what used to be Bretton College (a teacher training college), to reveal a forgotten part of the history of the building and its former occupants. At Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, she created the site-specific work 'Nothing is Finished, Nothing is Perfect, Nothing Lasts' (2012), a sculpture that was integrated into the walls of the building to make it look as if it was unfolding at the edges.
Several of Speed's installations create small spaces into which the viewer can enter. Examples include 'Reading Room (Box Man)' (2011) and 'Lady Garden' (2013).
Speed cites the work 'Inhabitant' (2009), created during a residency at the Atelierhaus Salzamt, as an important turning point in her practice. A higgledy-piggledy architectural costume made from recycled cardboard, 'Inhabitant' allowed Speed to realise that "if the body is actually in the work then it’s a totally different kind of practice", which transformed her approach and "led to every other work since.”
Speed began to work with performers in 2012, with the work 'Human Castle', performed by ten acrobats in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. She worked again with acrobats in 'Build Up' (2013), exploring the balance and endurance of the human body to create and collapse architecture-like structures.