Grundy Art Gallery presents Cardboard City, by Emily Speed; the first exhibition to form part of its Collaborate and Makeprogramme devised to engage Blackpool Schools and families in contemporary arts practice by working directly with an artist to create the artwork.
Cardboard City includes a transitory cityscape installation made entirely from everyday cardboard packaging materials, the ephemeral qualities of which will juxtapose against the solid and immovable Edwardian architecture of the gallery. Bringing these two building approaches into one space presents the temporary and fragile against the monumental and strong.
Speed’s practice is interdisciplinary, working in installation, sculpture, drawing and artist books. Through creating incomplete structures on the verge of abandonment, Speed’s work often propagates the ‘temporary nature of things’ and illuminates ‘man’s attempt to create permanence and legacy through building’.
Speed has recently completed a European Capital of Culture exchange residency, at the Salzamt Atelierhaus Linz, Austria, nominated by Liverpool Biennial and has also been awarded the Feiweles Trust Bursary for 2009/2010 at Yorkshire Sculpture Park which provides an annual bursary to an artist near the beginning of their career for short residencies in a variety of school contexts.
Our special thanks to the schools who worked alongside the artist in the gallery, to create and construct this imaginary city, and the many members of the public who produced their own contributions.
This project is funded by The National Lottery through Arts Council England.