From Emily Speed’s site: My interests lies in the relationship between people and buildings and my work explores the body and its relationship to architecture. The idea of shelter and the inhabitant is at the core of much of my work; how a person is shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space.
https://www.emilyspeed.co.uk/about.php
Emily began her talk about her exhibition Flatlands which was at Tate Liverpool.
Emily talks about model villages and the spaces they create and other miniature models and architecture either represented in painting or the interiors of a person.
Emily shows some examples of her work that includes performance, people dressed as buildings and even a building made out of Battenburg.
Emily talks about a piece called Innards:
Innards
Fountain, with live performance
Commissioned as part of A Woman’s Place, at Knole House in Kent, by Day & Gluckman, this work was comprised of a fountain, made from hand-made and hand-glazed tiles, made over a year, with a base built and installed by Kunstruct..
Text from the website: [Innards] explored the impact of Knole on the women who lived here, and of three women specifically: Victoria Sackville-West, Josefa Durán known as Pepita (her mother and infamous flamenco-dancer), and Vita Sackville-West (her daughter). A working fountain, ‘Innards’ borrowed the form of a dressing table and made public a space usually reserved for private ritual. Water, architecture, gardening and intimacy were brought together to reference important elements of these women’s lives.
The fountain echoed Victoria’s incredible energy and the installation of running water, electricity and telephone which she oversaw at Knole. The planting of Heliotrope nodded to Vita’s later career as a gardener. It was also the base note of Victoria’s favourite scent. The work alluded to the difficulties and complexities of these mother–daughter relationships, and of finding moments for tenderness, care and sensuality against the backdrop of public display and the performance of being a ‘lady’ of Knole.
Also included here is a short video of ‘Performing the Toilette’; a maquillage piece performed alongside and in response to ‘Innards’. Featuring the performer Natalie Sharp, and filmed and edited by Alice May Williams.
https://www.emilyspeed.co.uk/section.php?name=works&page=Innards
Emily speaks of rooms that are designed for women where women are literally within the confines of rooms but will break out of the spaces.
https://www.emilyspeed.co.uk/section.php?name=works&page=Rooms
Emily Speed talks about Terra Cotta and Flatland.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/emily-speed-flatland
Rusty'sArtWerk 