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Camberwell College of Arts   2007/2008

Liz Workman

My work focuses on domestic spaces and history; mainly using photography, over the past few years I have produced several books that examine these interests. I have just finished working on a book for the publishers Rizzoli International called Dr Johnson’s Doorknob: And Other Significant Parts of Great Men’s Houses, which is an expanded version of a collection of artist books I made in 2002 about the objects commonly found in the homes of great men.

Following on from this book, I feel I need to spend a period of time experimenting and push my work in a new direction, I would like to explore different printing techniques and use the facilites at Camberwell to develop my practice. I would hope to have produced a new collection of work and at least one new book during my time on the AA2A scheme.

There are a couple of ideas I would like to work on while on the scheme; firstly a book based on photographs taken at Strawberry Hill House, an amazing gothic mansion which is in a serious state of disrepair and is littered with the remnants of its past owners lives. The original owner of the house coined the word serendipity and currently there are many interesting juxtapositions such as an electric fire put in a richly carved fireplace and plastic light switches on brocade walls. I want to create a visual inventory of these quirks and try to preserve the traces of these (less historically important) lives before they are lost during the house’s restoration.

I am also working on a series of photographs of gaps, tiny spaces and nooks and crannies in peoples’ houses. I want to document the over-looked and forgotten places and spaces in homes, that things slide behind and are lost under.