Tate Liverpool premiere for artist Emily Speed's Flatland

A new piece of work by Liverpool-based artist Emily Speed will be premiered at Tate Liverpool this autumn.

Flatland, a new film installation, is Speed’s first major solo exhibition in a UK gallery and follows her announcement as the successful applicant in the inaugural Art North West scheme - an open call for artists based in the region to submit ideas for a project or exhibition to be shown at the Royal Albert Dock-based gallery.

Speed’s artistic practice examines the relationship between bodies and architecture, considering how someone is shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how they occupy their own psychological space.

In Flatland she follows a community of women for the duration of a day and uses set design, choreography and costume to depict flattened hierarchies and close-knit community structures.

It has been inspired by Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella of the same name, a satire on Victorian society in which all existence is limited to two dimensions and women restricted to thin, straight lines.

Meanwhile a painting from the Tate Collection - The Corridor (1950) by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva - will be shown alongside the film.

Speed’s previous works include Body Builders 2016, commissioned by Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Texas, Rooms Designed for a Woman 2017 which has been shown at Tate St Ives and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Façades/Fronts 2018, a live performance and film commission for Look Again Festival which was also shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Emily Speed: Flatland is at Tate Liverpool from September 21 to January 2, 2022.