Next Saturday at Yorkshire Sculpture Park Deputy Curator Sarah Coulson and I will host an informal day of discussion looking at the spaces we inhabit and how they affect us. The study day will include a walking tour round parts of the estate that have influenced my work. A selection of short texts will used (and circulated before the day) and read at specific points around the park. The order will be this:

Bothy Gallery – to see MAKE SHIFT exhibition

Screening of Buka (13:30 mins), a short film by artist Boldi Csernak

Greek Temple

Octavia from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Obelisk

Space (Continuation and End) from Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec

Boathouse

Extract on the miniature from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Bird Hide

Extract from Box Man Kobo Abe

The Beach

Picnic by the lake

Shell Grotto

Extract from In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanazaki

West Bretton College Student Halls

Excerpt from Geography of Home by Akiko Busch

Ersilia from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Book a space for £4 (includes parking) HERE

On Saturday and Sunday from 10.30 – 12.30 I’ll be taking people on a folly treasure hunt around the park (wear your waterproofs!). In the afternoons there will be a workshop where you can build your own folly using recycled materials.

The event has been recommended by the Guardian in this weeks art diary.

BOOK A PLACE  HERE

I also have to thank Helen Moore for her support and input over the last two years, she’s become a good friend as well as a rock! Lastly, but most importantly, my thanks goes to the curator who worked on my exhibition, Sarah Coulson who has been a pleasure to work with. Her advice, company, humour, fanatical type-setting and enthusiasm have been invaluable. I feel incredibly fortunate to have realised my first solo show with such brilliant support and in the incredible setting of the Bothy Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It’s on until September 18th.

Egg is a cast plaster work in an edition of 21 and is priced £120. It’s roughly 3 inches high and comes safely packed in a small wooden box.
If I can’t see you, you can’t see me is a four-colour screen print on balsa wood and grey board. Also an edition of 21, this is priced at £70 unframed and there are also two framed prints available at £110.

YSP warmly invites you to the private view of
Emily Speed: MAKE SHIFT

MAKE SHIFT is the first solo exhibition by Emily Speed, including new sculpture, installation, drawing and photography made in response to YSP’s built environment. Emily’s work explores the temporary and the transient through reference to architecture and the body. She examines buildings, both literally and metaphorically, as physical shelters and as containers for memory, bound with the history of their occupiers.

RSVP online or call 01924 830579

Related events
YSP and Opera North Present Four Seasons: Summer
15.07.11 / 21.15 / £15 / Book online

Fantastical Follies with Emily Speed
23+24.07.11 / Sessions from 10.30 / £4 / Book online

Emily Speed Study Day & Picnic
06.08.11 / 11.00–16.00 / £4 / Book online Some ideas here: http://emilyspeed.tumblr.com/

Supported by Design Centre North
Image: Emily Speed, Cabanon, 2011. Photo Mark Reeves

Aside from torrential rain, thunder and hail, it was a great day and I think we have some beautiful images of the work. Here’s a little taster – the image is Nobby (one of the technicians) releasing me into the wild. Right after this I got tangled in the branches and had to be shunted out onto open water.

The coracle – she sails, slowly but surely. A pleasure to drift on the upper lake at YSP this week, testing out the sea-worthiness of the coracle before I add building work to it. Happy to say it is watertight and not as difficult as I anticipated, although I wouldn’t like to be out in any kind of wind. Performance is the week after next so I have some construction to get on with!

There is now a little bit of information about me on the YSP website, as well as dates for the show. This must mean it is really happening! *gulp*.

After a great week at YSP last week I am fully stuck into some research on the park and making some models for new works. Today though, I am taking slides in the studio for work that will be shown in Roaming – Heterotopias, a group exhibition opening on 4th December at the Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne.

The exhibition is part of ‘Les Urbaines’ a festival of contemporary art taking place across the city. The work in this Roaming exhibtion is made in response to the idea of a temporary exhibition, and the theme of Heterotpias. As the work will be shown alongside and inbetween the permanent collection of the museum, currently curated under the theme of light, this might also have an impact on some of the works.

Exhibiting Artists: Sophie Bueno Boutellier, Andy Boot, Alice Cattaneo, Ermanno Cristini, Victor Man, Goran Petercol, Luca Scarabelli and Emily Speed, with an online r-roaming project by Michele Lombardelli.

Roaming -Heterotopias is curated by Alessandro Castiglioni and  Noah Stolz.

Happily I am going to Lausanne to install so looking forward to a bit of snow, so I can eat fondue… maybe?