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 |
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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 created | November 6, 2009 |
Record URL |
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