Lover's Rock
Wallpaper
1998 (made)
1998 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
At the age of 25 Sonia Boyce became the first black woman to have her work purchased by the Tate Gallery for its collection. Her work addresses issues of identity and the relationship between public and private space. References to domesticity are often made through the use of wallpaper.
In this piece Boyce uses blind embossing – stamping an impression into the paper, leaving raised areas – to create the image, which is the text of a popular song, ‘Hurt So Good’ (1975) by Susan Cadogan. Boyce intends the paper to evoke the experience of West Indian house parties, where couples dance together, leaving the wallpaper faintly marked where they press against it. These marks she sees as evidence of their physical and emotional engagement with the place and the music, and of the intensity of love itself, sensual but sometimes painful.
In this piece Boyce uses blind embossing – stamping an impression into the paper, leaving raised areas – to create the image, which is the text of a popular song, ‘Hurt So Good’ (1975) by Susan Cadogan. Boyce intends the paper to evoke the experience of West Indian house parties, where couples dance together, leaving the wallpaper faintly marked where they press against it. These marks she sees as evidence of their physical and emotional engagement with the place and the music, and of the intensity of love itself, sensual but sometimes painful.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Lover's Rock (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Blind embossing on wallpaper |
| Brief description | Blind embossed wallpaper, one of six drops, 'Lover's Rock', Sonia Boyce, Great Britain, 1998 |
| Physical description | Blind-embossed wallpaper, part two of a set of six. |
| Dimensions |
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| Production type | Limited edition |
| Marks and inscriptions | 'oh don't you know that it hurts so good/don't you know that it hurts so good/you know that it hurts so good/it hurts so good' (Inscription; decoration; centre of drop approx.; 1998) |
| Production | The work was made while Boyce was artist in Residence at the University of Manchester, which has a fine collection of historic wallpapers in the Whitworth Art Gallery. Attribution note: due to production difficulties very few duplicates of the original printing were produced. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | At the age of 25 Sonia Boyce became the first black woman to have her work purchased by the Tate Gallery for its collection. Her work addresses issues of identity and the relationship between public and private space. References to domesticity are often made through the use of wallpaper. In this piece Boyce uses blind embossing – stamping an impression into the paper, leaving raised areas – to create the image, which is the text of a popular song, ‘Hurt So Good’ (1975) by Susan Cadogan. Boyce intends the paper to evoke the experience of West Indian house parties, where couples dance together, leaving the wallpaper faintly marked where they press against it. These marks she sees as evidence of their physical and emotional engagement with the place and the music, and of the intensity of love itself, sensual but sometimes painful. |
| Associated objects |
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| Bibliographic references |
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| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.464-1999 |
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| Record created | January 18, 2000 |
| Record URL |
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