Slow Social with Emma Smith

About

PHUPLEC* is the phenomenon of growing or becoming a plot of land.

PHUPLEC* celebrates the small, the wild, the overripe, the rotten, the undesired, and the redundant as necessary tactics for a sustainable future.

Emma has created Phuplec for Cromwell Road, Cambridge, UK, where she is the artist-in-residence. Cromwell Road is a plot of land with a history of growing and making. Originally fields, this area was sold off after enclosure and in 1927 was turned into allotments. These allotments were tended to an almost professional level by shift workers at the nearby concrete and iron factories. While many of these allotments were developed as housing as the local population grew, the Cromwell Road site became a wood workshop and yard in 1938. In 2021 this site will become new homes, green space, a community centre and nursery. This project takes this moment of development to embrace sustainable and bio-diverse know how and propose new futures.

Phuplec is commissioned by Resonance-Cambridge, the public art programme for Cambridge Investment Partnership.

Emma Smith has a social based practice and creates installations, performances, temporary and permanent works through research, engagement and collaboration. 

Previous commissions include for Art on the Underground, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Delfina Foundation, ICA, London; Arnolfini Bristol, HOME Manchester, Bluecoat Liverpool, Kettle’s Yard Cambridge, Tramway Glasgow, Grizedale Cumbria, UK; MAAS, Sydney Australia; Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia USA; B-A-U, Bolzano Italy; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland; and Matadero Madrid, Spain with semi-permanent and permanent works commissioned by numerous city and county councils across the UK, National Trust, and Groundworks.

www.emma-smith.com