Elizabeth Murphy & Emily Speed

︎ @e__liz__a__beth_
︎ emilyspeed.co.uk/

Emily SpeedEmily Speed

We built a friendship through passing each other, at previews in the studio and in other related orbits. Realising that we were both processing research in parallel, talking about the agitation of architecture, hauntings and possessions, being overtaken and imbued in our surrounds. Since we have always managed to push each other, prod the works, share the possibilities. This something we have both missed since the bottom fell out of the world. Having both struggled to make, read or focus since March everything feels untethered and insignificant - the connection is cracked. We both acknowledge a return to producing will be tough, crawling out the sludge we have managed to start talking again. Both with enduring responsibilities the time to talk and engage is always diminished, instead the support we now provide for each other is now more linguistic and more domestic.  Having a framework to push us to re engage in sharing thoughts and resources, criticism and suggestions in an intended focused way would be an unimaginable opportunity at this point. The chance for this to provide a financial window to bolster this is essential just now.  We are hoping to maybe be each other's light in the fog for a while, and this would give us the opportunity to do that. Having the accountability of keeping going would bring hope.


About the Artists

Elizabeth Murphy
Elizabeth works with writing, photography and installation to review my experiences of class, fatness and disability. These works, shown in publications, gallery spaces and online, excavate moments of suburban horror: looking at personal psychological hauntings within West Yorkshire and the socio-economic pressures which become monstrous in these environments. I am interested in the amplification of drama, shame, aspiration, sex and mystery in these contexts and my works explore ways in which I have been consumed, regurgitated and haunted by these monsters.

Emily Speed
Emily works with Sculpture, drawing and film using these to interrogate the relationship between people and buildings. The idea of shelter and the inhabitant is at the core of much of her work; how a person is shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space. In Emilys film Rooms Designed for a Woman she reflects on how buildings have traditionally been designed and planned by men, while women have tended to spend the most time within them.

Inspired by her own collection of photographs of architects with their building models, in the film a man surveys and builds models made of foamboard and cake; women occupy and interact with these models in playful and performative ways.

Elizabeth Murphy