Wirksworth Festival

I’ll be exhibiting some drawings during Wirksworth Contemporary Art Festival this year, in the window of a DIY shop of course. The art part of the festival has been curated by David Bethell, curator of AirSpace Gallery.

The work I’m showing will be drawings of scratch built constructions and these have been inspired by the puzzle gardens and the cottages built by the mine workers in Wirksworth. Using local materials and building on available land, the cottages sit back to back and make a tightly knit, higgledy piggledy community. It’s an amazing place.

Coracle namesake

I found this online today, a coracle named after me by artist Rosalie Schweiker. I am well chuffed. Made during Das Boot, a project in Germany this summer.

Study day at YSP

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

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

A very fitting title given how busy things have been – this is a mini residency at Burlington Arts Club taking place this week. Invited by Andrew Bracey and working alongside Kevin Hunt, Frances Disley and Dave Evans, we are spending the week making, playing, experimenting and talking. Yesterday we watched The Shining. There will be a private viewing event on Thursday 28th from 6 – 8pm.

Fantastical Follies

This weekend YSP opens up its nature reserve to the public for the first time in, well, ages. This means the follies are all now accessible as well as the lakes -all my favourite parts of the park.

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

It’s open

The exhibition is open! Thanks to everyone who came to the opening. Thankfully I didn’t have to make a speech, but if I had I would have said a huge thank you to everyone at the park and to all of the technicians who helped me, especially Nobby, Dick and James. Dick also for his beautiful photography and for feeding me all week (along Jane, his wife!). Mark Reeves took the fantastic images of the Cabanon on the lake, his website 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.

New Editions

To accompany the MAKE SHIFT exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture park, I have made two limited edition works for sale there (have a look on their website soon!).

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.

An Invitation

Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Emily Speed: MAKE SHIFT
Private View Invitation

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