Emily Speed

Emily Speed

Known for her work examining the relationship between the body and architecture, Speed’s practice considers how a person is shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space. Working in sculpture, performance and film, Speed's work looks at the relationship between people and buildings and in particular the power dynamics at play in built space. Her work plays with scale and creates layers around the body, often hybrid forms of clothing and architecture. 

Over the last few years, Speed has had solo presentations at Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, TRUCK, Calgary, and Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Texas. She has been commissioned to make performances for Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Laumeier Sculpture Park (St Louis) and Edinburgh Art Festival among others and recent exhibitions include: A Woman’s Place at Knole House; Body Builders at Exeter Phoenix Gallery; and The Happenstance, Scotland + Venice at the Architecture Biennale in 2018. Emily Speed lives and works in Cheshire, UK.

Flatland is centred around a film installation, which uses set design, choreography, and costume to depict flattened hierarchies within a close-knit community of women. This is accompanied by a second film that focuses on a single performer, signing a text written by author Eley Williams in British Sign Language. 

The work is inspired by Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella, Flatland, a satire of Victorian society where all existence is limited to two dimensions. In this society men may have any number of sides depending on their status. Women, on the other hand, are thin, straight lines who are at the bottom of the hierarchy. As their pointed ends are considered to be dangerous, they are restricted to separate entrances and must paint one end of their line-body orange as well as swaying continuously to alert others to their presence. 

Echoing Abbott’s novella, the performers in Speed’s film begin line-like and rigid before working together and unfolding to create more colourful, layered, and complex shapes through increasingly vibrant movement. This evolution is also realised through costume. The performers wear functional housework garments, such as aprons and tabards that contain hidden elements relating to the set design.

Image: Emily Speed, Flatland (digital film still), 2021. Commissioned by Tate Liverpool.