Rooms Designed for a Woman (productions still): Floorplan

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, 2 Marsham Street

This production still is from Emily Speed’s film Rooms Designed for a Woman (2017), commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a solo exhibition in their Chapel, and subsequently shown at the Coventry Biennial (2017) and in a major solo show at Tate St Ives (2020). Inspired by the artist’s own collection of photographs of architects with their building models, the film is a sequence of vignettes bringing together bodies and architecture: a man surveys and builds models made of foam board and cake; women occupy and interact with these models in playful and performative ways.

Representative of Speed’s broader practice, the film reflects on how buildings have traditionally been designed and planned by men, while women have tended to spend the most time within them.

Born in Chester, Emily Speed studied at Edinburgh College of Art (1997-2001) and Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London (2005-2006). She lives and works in Liverpool. Selected solo exhibitions include Showreel, Milan, Italy (2010); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2011); Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Texas (2016); Tate St Ives (2020) and Tate Liverpool (2021). Her work has been included in group shows including: ‘Topophobia’ (Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Spacex, Exeter, 2012); Fabric Spaces, PIANOFABRIEK, Brussels (2015); and ‘Scotland+Venice: The Happenstance’, Architecture Biennale, Venice (2018). In 2013, she was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize. Residencies include a European Capital of Culture exchange residency with Linz Kultur, Austria (2009); and as Derek Hill Foundation Scholar at the British School at Rome (2014-15).

Places

Subjects

architectural plan, woman, architectural structure

Materials & Techniques

photographic paper, Fujicolour Crystal Archive paper, C-type photograph, photographic print

Artist

Emily Speed (1979 - )

Title

Rooms Designed for a Woman (productions still): Floorplan

Edition

One of an edition of 5, plus 2 artist's proofs

Date

2017

Medium

C-type print on photographic paper

Dimensions

height: 40.5 cm; width: 60.9 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 17 March 2021

GAC number

18909