CityLife

Walls Are Talking at Whitworth Art Gallery

Nana (Niki de St Phalle)

GIVING new meaning to the term ‘statement wall’, the Whitworth Art Gallery’s current exhibition Walls Are Talking is a clever reassessment of what can happen to everyday décor in the hands of leading artists.

Artists utilising wallpaper as a canvas is nothing new, but the breadth of topics being examined and the forthright nature of the work suggest that it is becoming an increasingly interesting medium for conceptual art.

In the first show of its kind, Walls Are Talking brings together work by a seminal group of artists that is often provocative, occasionally eyebrow-raising but always surprising.

Split into two sections, the main exhibition space features dozens of limited-run wallpapers while the gender and sexuality section features both limited and commercial designs.

The exhibition was developed by Christine Woods, curator of wallpapers at the Whitworth, in conjunction with Gill Saunders, senior curator of word and image at the V&A. Christine says using wallpapers as an exhibition piece is a clever way of connecting with visitors. “I think what artists have recognised is that we as consumers tend to ignore wallpaper.

“We agonise over buying it but once it’s on the wall, we see it as a background.

“But it represents us as much as our clothes or our politics do.

“Artists realise that wallpapers are so everyday that when we look at them we have an unconscious dialogue.

Vibrant

“In the way that people might find it hard to look at controversial works of art, they don’t find that about wallpaper because it’s so common.”

Which is just as well, because the gallery has an outstanding collection of deliberately controversial works on display.

From the vibrant Aids wallpaper to Francesco Simeti’s recreation of Victoriana paper featuring images of chemical warfare, Allen Jones’ racy Right Hand Lady and Virgil Marti’s Bullies – a naming and shaming of his school bullies via pictures from a high school year book.

Even Thomas Demand’s elegant ivy wallpaper, specially reprinted to cover the entire South Gallery, is inspired by a house left to go derelict and become overgrown because of a legacy of terrible abuse that happened inside.

There are gentler pieces: Michael Craig-Martin has created a unique design for the gallery which will never be reproduced, Catherine Bertola’s Beyond The Looking Glass is a menacingly magical room where the wallpaper is transformed into a living object, while Virgil’s Beer Can Library, Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy and Warhol’s Mau paper are firmly tongue in cheek.

“Quite a lot of the artists doing this work up until recently have been American artists, but this exhibition has a true international spread,” says Christine.

“In this country, we’ve got so few wallpaper collections that the chance to see all these hanging together is most unusual and very exciting.”

From February 6, 2010 at Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Road. Free.