Emily Speed

About

Speed's interests lies in the physical and psychological relationships that exist between people and buildings and her work explores the body and architecture through sculpture, drawing, perfomance and film. The idea of shelter and the inhabitant is at the core of the work; how a person is shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space. In addition to the home as a site, Speed's work is also concerned with the power dynamics inherent in built space more generally, and the layers that surround the body; skin, clothing and walls. Her structural works and installations often serve a dual purpose as both physical shelters and wearable clothing

"The body is a building we continually learn and relearn to inhabit and to escape from. Emily Speed’s work suggests that architecture is not just material – it’s metaphor, memory, muscle. Her practice explores the symbiotic relationship between the body and architecture. How architecture moulds the body and how the body shapes architectural form, in a continuous exchange of movement and meaning. In Speed’s world, buildings do not hold us upright – they bend, they reach, they embrace, they trap, they fail the bodies they’re made for." Elouise Oui in Inside the Building, a Body

CV

Selected Exhibitions and Commissions

Sep - Oct 2026This 26, group show at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.
July 2025Over and Over and Over Again, group show at The Handbag Factory, London
May-July 2025Energy House 2.0: Miska Henner & Emily Speed, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
May - July 2024Drawing Biennial 2024, Drawing Room, London
Sep-Dec 2023UNBUILD: a site of possibility at Drawing Room London, with Jessie Brennan, Ian Kiaer, Tanoa Sasraku, Emily Speed and Do Ho Suh
Sep 2021 - June 2022Flatland, Tate Liverpool
May - June 2021Kinross at 40, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
Jan - Sep 2020Rooms Designed for a Woman, Tate St Ives
January 2020Cocoon, a commmission for Great Ormond Street Hospital, realised with Plaey
May - Nov2018A Woman's Place, with a commissioned site-specific work 'Innards' - a functional fountain - for this group show curated by Day and Gluckman, Knole House, Kent
Sep 2018 – Jan 2019The Precious Clay, Porcelein in contemporary art, commissioned by Meadow Arts, Museum of Royal Worcester
May - Nov 2018Scotland+Venice: The Happenstance, Biennale Architecttura, Venezia
June 2018Façades/Fronts with Jack Webb, commissioned by Look Again Festival, Aberdeen
2017 - 2018Possibilities Club, Bootle Library, commissioned by Maria Brewster, working with Plaey and other collaborators for 'At The Library'
July - Oct 2017Commission for Abacus, a group exhibition for children, Bluecoat, Liverpool
April - June 2017[Re]construct: An Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme exhibition, The Chapel, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
March - June 2017Transparency: An Arts Council Collection National Partners Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Jan - March 2017Solo exhibition - BODY BUILDERS , Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Exeter
Oct - Dec 2016Solo exhibition - BODY BUILDERS , Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Texas
Oct - Dec 2016After the Primitives (with David Webb) , dalla Rosa Gallery, London
Nov - Dec 2016Dark Geometries , Coleman Projects, London
June - July2016Solo exhibition - BODY BUILDING , TRUCK, Calgary
Nov - Dec 2015WORK/SPACE, a public art commission, Oriel Wrexham and Glyndwr University, Wrexham
Sep - Dec 2015Fabric Spaces, PIANOFABRIEK, Brussels
July - Sep 2014Strange Business, Syson Gallery, Nottingham
July - Sep 2014Cities of Ash, g39, Cardiff
June 2014Solitude, a newly commissioned artist's book and reading room, Barnaby Festival, Macclesfield
March - May 2014Littoral Zone, solo exhibition at Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth
Jan - March 2014Silence Unbound, Center for Artists Books, New York
Jan - Feb 2014The Land has Many Parts, Jane Deering Gallery, Santa Barbara
Sep - Nov 2013'Lady Garden', a new commission for STILL/Life, Ecologies of Perception, Trust New Art Bristol at Tyntesfield, National Trust, Bristol
Sep 2013Tightrope, a group show with Takming Chuang, Echo Morgan and Hanae Utamura curated by Kate Pantling for Sumarria Lunn Gallery, London
Sep 2013'The Construction Workers' a new commission for Wirksworth Festival, Derbyshire
April - May 2013Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London
March - June 2013Northern Art Prize exhibition with Margaret Harrison, Joanne Tatham & Tom O'Sullivan and Rosalind Nashishibi, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds
March - April 2013Head to Head with Hayley Newman, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
Oct 2012Subjective Involvement in Physical Spatial Entities with Aeneas Wilder and Esther Stocker (newly commissioned work) Oredaria Gallery, Rome
Aug 2012Human Castle, Edinburgh Art Festival 2012 Commissioned by Sorcha Carey.
June - July 2012Camp Out, Site-specific performance work for this exhibition at Laumeier Sculpture Park, St Louis, USA
March 2012Exterior Wall Commission, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. A commission to create a sixth-month long intervention with the architecture of Open Eye's new gallery
Jan - July 2012Topophobia, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London and touring to Bluecoat, Liverpool and Spacex, Exeter
Jan 2012Flat Pack, a solo project at Hartington Road Gallery
July - Sep 2011MAKE SHIFT, Solo exhibition, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Aug - Sep 2011The Paper Cooperative, Spacex, Exeter
May 2011Dialogos (Catalogue available online here), ASSAB One, Milan
April - May 2011Small Scale Survival, Aid & Abet, Cambridge.
April 2011Textures of Time, Frederick Parker Gallery, curated by MA Curating the Contemporary, London Metropolitan University & Whitechapel Gallery
2010ROAMING. HETEROTOPIAS , Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland
2010egg, nest, home, country, universe, curated by Paola Caravati, solo exhibition #5 in a series at Showreel, Milan, Italy

Residencies

April - June 2015Cultural Crossroads residency Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY
October - December 20144Derek Hill Foundation Scholar (Drawing) The British School at Rome
April - May 2014Standpoint Futures Residency Standpoint Gallery, London
August - September 2012Production residency: Explore, Expand, Expose Linz Kultur, Salzamt Atelierhaus Linz, Austria
March - May 2010A Curriculum at A Foundation, Liverpool
July - September 2009European Capital of Culture exchange residency with Linz Kultur, nominated by Liverpool Biennial, Salzamt Atelierhaus Linz, Austria
September - October 2007Artist's Book Residency at Women's Studio Workshop, New York State. Funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with additional support from The New York State Council on the Arts.
March - August 2004Artist in Residence at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, Scotland. Funded by the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

Awards

2013Northern Art Prize, Shortlist
2011Bar-Tur Award shortlist
2009/2010Feiweles Trust Bursary, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
2007 & 2005Project Funding: Juliet Gomperts Trust
April 2004Project funding: Scottish Arts Council Lottery Fund
May 2001John Kinross travel scholarship awarded by The Royal Scottish Academy to live and work in Florence, Italy

Publications

  • Drawing Room, Drawing Biennial (exhibition catalogue), 2013. ISBN: 978-0-9558299-7-0
  • Atelierhaus Salzamt, Expand, Explore, Expose (exhibition catalogue), 2012.
  • Sarah Coulson, Gordon Brennan, Laura Mousavi and Emily Speed, MAKE SHIFT, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, July 2011
  • R. Klanten(ed), Doppelganger, Images of the Human Being, Gestalten: Berlin, 2011, pviii, 84 and 85. ISBN 978-3-89955-332-1
  • Emily Speed, Books as Bridges (essay) in Hand, Voice and Vision, artist's books from the Women's Studio Workshop (ex cat), Women's Studio Workshop: Rosendale, 2010, p30 - 32. ISBN: 1-893125-78-5
  • Emily Speed (ed), Cardboard Folly #1 THE FOLD, 2010, ISSN: 2044-9771
  • Vision Discovery: Art, Vision Magazine China, May 2010, p26. ISSN 1671-3397
  • Emily Speed, Unfolding Architecture, Women's Studio Workshop: Rosendale, 2007. ISBN 1-893125-24-6

Education

2005 - 2006MA Fine Art: Drawing, University of the Arts London: Wimbledon College of Art
1997 - 2001BA (Hons) Drawing & Painting, Edinburgh College of Art

Collections

  • Collection of the City of Linz
  • Library of Congress (Artists' Books)
  • Tate Artists' Book Collection
  • Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collection
  • University of West England: Centre for Fine Print Research Artists' Books Collection
  • Yale University
  • University of Delaware
  • Indiana University
  • Women's Studio Workshop, NY State
  • Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Vassar College
  • Virginia Commonwealth University
  • The University of Utah
  • Royal Scottish Academy
  • Hospitalfield Trust
  • Edinburgh College of Art
  • The University of Northampton; special books collection
  • Leeds College of Arts & Design
  • Private collections