Lizzie King, Belonging, 2021
Artist: Lizzie King
Title: Belonging
Year: 2021
Medium: C-Type print of 42 individual silver gelatin prints
Accession Number: US2022-04A
Acquisition info:
Lizzie King uses analogue and digital printmaking and photography to explore the ‘narratives of our human-centred universe’. This work was one of two pieces commissioned for Rediscovering Salford in 2020, a city-wide project inviting artists to respond to green spaces in the city.
King focussed on Peel Park and the importance of free and open ‘parks for the people’. Demand for public green spaces traces its roots to the Victorian era, and the park is widely recognised as one of the first ever public parks – and the first to be paid for by public subscription. This importance was heightened during the Covid-19 pandemic: while the artist was shielding it was one of the few safe places to visit.
The park bench became an important symbol of rest, relaxation and reflection: ‘The bench asks nothing of the sitter but ‘to be’’. In this work King reverses the roles – the bench itself becomes the ‘sitter’ of a ‘portrait’. Using an elaborate process of photography, engraving, enlarging and digitally combining 42 original images into one composition, the making of the work itself also became a meditative and reflective process.