Emily Speed

Working with costumed performers has become, for Speed, a means of exploring different aspects of the human relationship with the built environment. In ‘A Parade of Architectural Commas’ (2017), commissioned by and performed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, five performers made their way through the landscapes of the sculpture park, dressed respectively as a chapel, a ruin, an obelisk, a pyramid, and a grotto. These five architectural archetypes refer to those often used as follies in landscape architecture in the eighteenth century, and the title of the work is taken from Capability Brown's writing on this subject. With Yorkshire Sculpture Park itself a former eighteenth-century estate, 'A Parade of Architectural Commas' served to bring to life the history of this landscaped parkland.

'Rooms Designed for a Woman' (2017), again using performers dressed in and occupying small cardboard buildings, is a film that explores the relationship between architecture and the female body, drawing attention to discrepancies between those who design architectural spaces and those who use them.

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.

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.”

Making books is an important part of Speed's practice. When she was resident at the Women’s Studio Workshop in New York State in 2007 she created one of her first editions of books called 'Unfolding Architecture', which, as she says "brought together imagery, sculpture and text". Other bookworks include 'A House Like Me' (2010) and 'The Cake Book' (2015).

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 (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 cites many influences, both artistic and literary. They include: Gordon Matta Clark, Italo Calvino, Kobo Abe, Mark Z. Daniewleski, Franz Kafka (in particular his short story, The Burrow), Marcel Aymé, and Edwin Abbott (in particular his 1884 novella, Flatland).