A Corner of Home Suzie Howell
A Corner of Home
Suzie Howell
Published 5 May, 2020
In the days that have passed and the days that are to come, we'll all be spending more time indoors. A Corner of Home collects photographic studies and new works made by artists in their immediate environments; small snapshots of the impulse to create.
Edited by Trine Stephensen and Joanna Cresswell
1. Where are you living at the moment and how has that environment shaped you creatively? Can you tell us about a favourite detail of this place and why?
At the moment, I am living in a flat in Walthamstow in North East London. It’s not a particularly big flat but it’s quite long and thin and is separated into a few different rooms so I’m able to change my background occasionally. It also has a small garden which I’m extremely grateful for during this time. Before this flat, I lived in a warehouse which had a lot of natural light streaming in and a large amount of space to move about. I always felt inspired to be creative in that space and I made a lot of work there. With this new environment, I’ve considered taking photos here but I’ve never given any proper consideration as to how and what I would shoot, so I’ve been slowly thinking about how I’d like to go about it.
I’ve become enchanted by the way the sun moves through the windows and around the narrow corners, creating long, double shadows as it moves its way from the back to the front of the house throughout the day. I like the way it bounces off the neighbours houses and the cars outside to create fleeting light shows. In the evening, when the sun dips really low, it pours through the front windows and fills the room with a bright golden yellow for an hour, this is then quickly replaced by a bright street lamp that creates a dramatic puppet show of plants and trees onto my back wall. It’s these little light changes that have become my favourite feature of this place.
2. How have you looked at the materials of home differently in the past weeks? Are there parts of it that have revealed themselves to you in new ways?
I’ve been chasing this light around my flat and moving different objects in and out of it to create little sculptures. It’s nice to have the time to experiment with different materials at home that I perhaps haven’t paid much attention to before. I’m quite playful with photography and I enjoy a slow process of moulding and remoulding objects into a form that reflects my mood. I’ve been pushing the limits of my camera to see how dark I can go to cancel out any background distraction as a way of elevating and celebrating the details of that object. I also think these photos have a lot to do with the novelty of the sun finally being out which creates a whole new way of looking at things. As soon as spring comes around in the UK, everyone goes a little nuts for it- myself included.
3. Tell us about how you’ve been using photography lately? What are you making or putting in front of the lens?
As well as putting objects in front of the lens, I’ve been experimenting a bit with photographing myself which I would never normally do. I’m always trying to communicate how a space or landscape makes me feel in my work, and one way I try to express this is through another female body, often collaborating with a performer of some kind. I obviously can’t work in collaboration with anyone else at the moment, so I set up a timer to photograph myself moving about and interacting with my garden. I’ve also been photographing my cats a lot! I’ve become a bit obsessed with watching them go about their day, completely oblivious to how the world has changed (apart from their humans being around more). I’ve always been fascinated and envious by how animals live solely in the present moment, never hung up on the past or worried about the future. There's a lot of simple life lessons we could gain from them during this time. I don’t know if any of this work I’m making is particularly good or is interesting to anyone else, but it’s been great having something to focus on and I've enjoyed the freedom of having time to experiment and be playful with ideas.
