Grief is a bad moon a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant a saboteur who at the slightest change in the sunlight or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial will flick the memory switch bringing tears to your eyes.

A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes in galleries on the walls of auction houses and off the walls in museum storage.