Belonging, 2021 Lizzie King

CATALYST: Scholar Spotlight – Lizzie King

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.

Lizzie King’s ‘Belonging’ (2021) alongside Joshua Turner’s ‘A Seat in the Shade’ (2020)
Install shot
Image: Courtesy of Jules Lister

Lizzie King’s ‘Belonging’ (2021)
Close-up shot
Image: Courtesy of Sam Parker

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.


Lizzie King’s ‘Belonging’ (2021)
Install shot
Image: Courtesy of Jules Lister