A CHESHIRE based artist is gearing up for her first solo show at a major UK gallery.

Tate Liverpool will present a new film installation by artist Emily Speed as the inaugural Art North West commission.

Flatland uses set design, choreography and costume to depict flattened hierarchies and close-knit community structures.

It opens to the public on September 25.

Known for her work examining relationships between people and architecture, Emily's practice considers how people are shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how they occupy their own psychological space.

'The centrepiece of her film is a portable stage set inspired by manually operated Japanese kabuki theatre sets that functions at times like the pages of a book, folding and changing in different directions.

The new film is inspired by Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella, Flatland, where all existence is limited to two dimensions and women are restricted to thin, straight lines. A satire of Victorian society and the role of women within it, the book poses provocative questions about perception, reality and metaphysics and has influenced and inspired artists and scientists alike.