Image of Gallery in South Kensington
Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level C , Case MB2B, Shelf DR113, Box DW21

Wallpaper

2008 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

John Kindness (born Belfast, 1951) was commissioned to create an installation for the Foundling Museum, London in 2008. (The Foundling Museum, opened 2004, was originally the Foundling Hospital, a home for abandoned babies, set up in 1739; the artist William Hogarth was involved with the Hospital, and donated works to the Foundling collection - his patron, Capt Thomas Coram founded the hospital). Kindness's installation drew on the history of English interiors (the Museum is well-preserved 18th century house), with decorative borders framing pastiches of work by Hogarth, and of Dudley Watkins, the illustrator who created the character of desperate Dan, in the Dandy comics. Pulling the whole scheme together was a wallpaper border, based on the rococo style fashionable in the 18th century, but the motifs were in fact derived from photographs taken by Kindness of fly-tipping sites in Hackney. So this junkyard detritus - pipes, tubing, broken bits of domestic appliances - became playful substitutes for the kinds of 18th century decoration which combined urns and vases, shields and swords, with the ubiquitous curlicues of acanthus leaves and twisted ribbons.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Printed
Brief description
Length of wallpaper border with abtract pseudo-rococo pattern in brown and blue, by John Kindness, UK, 2008
Physical description
Small length of a wallpaper border with an abtract pseudo-rococo pattern printed in brown and blue.
Dimensions
  • Height: 24cm
  • Width: 72.2cm
Marks and inscriptions
'Border section from 'An English Interior' John Kindness 2008.' (In pencil, in the artist's hand, on the back.)
Credit line
Given by the artist
Summary
John Kindness (born Belfast, 1951) was commissioned to create an installation for the Foundling Museum, London in 2008. (The Foundling Museum, opened 2004, was originally the Foundling Hospital, a home for abandoned babies, set up in 1739; the artist William Hogarth was involved with the Hospital, and donated works to the Foundling collection - his patron, Capt Thomas Coram founded the hospital). Kindness's installation drew on the history of English interiors (the Museum is well-preserved 18th century house), with decorative borders framing pastiches of work by Hogarth, and of Dudley Watkins, the illustrator who created the character of desperate Dan, in the Dandy comics. Pulling the whole scheme together was a wallpaper border, based on the rococo style fashionable in the 18th century, but the motifs were in fact derived from photographs taken by Kindness of fly-tipping sites in Hackney. So this junkyard detritus - pipes, tubing, broken bits of domestic appliances - became playful substitutes for the kinds of 18th century decoration which combined urns and vases, shields and swords, with the ubiquitous curlicues of acanthus leaves and twisted ribbons.
Collection
Accession number
E.512-2009

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Record createdNovember 6, 2009
Record URL
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