Fossa
Emily Speed Fossa, 2023, plywood, plaster, sand, goat hair, pearl glue, natural pigments, fired stoneware, fir branch, dowel, linen, cotton, wadding, magnets, wire.
Commissioned by Drawing Room, London for UNBUILD: a site of possibility, 22 September – 10 December 2023
From the website: In Fossa, the distinction between body and building is lost; a leg becomes structural support, and fingers emerge from the tightly woven innards to clutch the structure’s own edges, barely holding things together. By making this link with the body explicit, her work draws attention to the fact that buildings are manifestations of the people and societies that construct them.
The exhibition was accompanied by a brilliant reading list and an online publication, in which Fossa is discussed in a wonderfully creative and personal text by Matthew Turner.
All images by Ben Deakin.
UNBUILD: a site of possibility considers the impact of buildings on our bodies, our minds, our memories and our dreams and was the inaugural exhibition at Drawing Room’s first, permanent home after twenty years of nomadic activity.
Jessie Brennan, Ian Kiaer, Tanoa Sasraku, Emily Speed and Do Ho Suh propose a range of physical, emotional and political responses to buildings, as places and ideas, that offer us several paths to explore.