Walls Are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture

Featuring works by more than 30 international artists, including Sonia Boyce, Thomas Demand, Robert Gober, Damien Hirst, Abigail Lane, Francesco Simeti, and Niki de Saint Phalle, this collection puts wallpaper in context by showing how historic wallpaper motifs, styles, and methods are used in contemporary art and how existing patterns have been adapted and subverted to telling effect. Inherently ephemeral and often overlooked, wallpaper has hardly been the most obvious medium for a contemporary avant-garde artist; however, during the past two decades, artists exploring themes of home, memory, and identity have created installations with backdrops of specially designed wallpaper which has played a crucial part in the mise en scène. Some of the wallpapers are pictorial polemics that illustrate warfare or racism, and others show obvious conflicts in contemporary Western culture, in particular those associated with gender and sexuality.