'Wallpaper': Sonia Boyce and Christine Woods interviewed by Andrea MacKean
In: Annotations 2: Sonia Boyce: Performance. Edited by Mark Crinson. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1998, pp. 34-39.
AM Could you give us an idea of the history of wallpapers and their social appreciations?
CW The first paper in this country assumed to have been a wallpaper was used on a ceiling in the early sixteenth century. It is difficult to say how quickly it became an item of interior decoration because decorative papers were purchased for trunk liners, endpapers, backs of playing cards, that kind of thing. Once repeating patterns were made then they could be used on walls. At the time there was no technology to provide continuous paper. The patterns were printed on small sheets of paper, and this made them manageable for a number of purposes.
The people who had decorated papers on their walls were those who could afford fashion. Wallpaper wasn't widely available until mechanisation of the industry in the middle of the nineteenth century. These new products were not necessarily considered to be of the best quality, but they allowed people at the lower end of the market to decorate their walls. But there was still a vast population who could not afford it, or didn't want it.
AM Was wallpaper primarily used domestically?
CW There is this domestic association because it tends to be available to a domestic market, and was found in domestic spaces. Wallpaper wasn't a normal decoration for public spaces until the late nineteenth century. Then it was advocated for spaces like town halls, because some wallpapers were washable and thought to be sanitary. They were used for spaces where there was 'mixed company', the implication being that all these people would give off whatever fumes people give off, and the surfaces could be washed.
AM Sonia, what were your conceptions about wallpaper when you began?
SB My interest dates to the early eighties, when I was using decorative elements in large drawings. A pattern or line can delineate a sense of volume. I found this decoration was an illusion, but was also a filler. Also I was interested in the way wallpaper and craft were aligned as domestic and feminine. I returned to wallpaper a few years ago, to ideas of patterning and surface, and of enclosing or filling space. This piece, Lover's Rock, began as a song, and I realised it might transplant itself to wallpaper, although I didn't follow logical steps from song to space. When I met Christine I was thinking of a graphic image. But I began to want to make the text more physical.
CW To pick up on this filling of space, the word 'wallpaper' is used to designate a kind of background that no-one notices but that is necessary to have, such as supermarket music or filler images on television. The pervasiveness of this 'wallpaper' suggests we can't do without that filling in of space. When you talk about the relationship between certain types of activity and the role of women, there is a link between what is supposedly not noticed but which is actually vital.
AM The unseen surface, somehow transparent, creates a sensation of something that isn't present, or a vision of something or somewhere else. It makes people less aware of the enclosure of the space, in a way like those continuity images that allow people to let their mind wander outside something focused.
SB It reminds me of when I was a child, and the wallpaper at home being the focus of my eyes, to imagine, to float off on a train of thought. I never thought about leaves or flowers, but the pattern's repetition becomes an entrance into another field.
AM Wallpaper also covers what is there. It changes the nature of the space, and stops one from looking at the actual surfaces.
CW One of wallpaper's functions is to enable people to create certain impressions about themselves, and these may be false. It can mask what isn't there, such as a lack of status.
AM Could you comment on the materials and processes?
CW The range is huge, but not as huge as it was in the nineteenth century, when new technology was being introduced and people wanted to do new things. Many of these relied on texture for their saleability. Substantially embossed wallpaper was extremely popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Most wallpapers today are embossed to add bulk and interest but not so that it is consciously registered. But in the later part of the nineteenth century, embossing was used to imitate embossed leather which had been fashionable in elite circles. Embossed imitation leathers were produced in the same ways that the embossed leathers had been made, with plates like Sonia is going to use. In the twentieth century, there were still heavily embossed papers, but these were embossed with rollers. Plates were too expensive. Embossing also allows the combination of a printed and an embossed design of different kinds.
AM How did Christine's knowledge of wallpaper allow you to reconsider your initial conceptions?
SB Too many options were opened up, I had to start eliminating. Otherwise I would have ended up with an elaborate design that couldn't do the job I wanted this piece to do. Now I'd like to go back and look at those papers again, and then think about other ways of making wall-based works. But when I was first looking at the papers at the Withworth, there were so many possibilities, it became overwhelming.
AM A lot of your work shares aspects with wallpaper in the colours, the repetition of patterns, and the relationship with a wall surface. This piece is one of your least decorative works. The emphasis on texture has drastically reduced the decorative aspect.
SB: That is part of the overwhelmingness of how beautiful and how beautifully made many of the papers are. I had to move away from it being a graphic thing to where something else became more important.
AM Is there a formal relationship between the reduced, textured white surface and the non-decorative elements of words and sounds?
SB I wanted to pull back to the idea of someone moving across the room, reading the words. The rhythmic pattern of verse chorus becomes apparent as one moves across the room. The words suggested a formal enough narrative on one level to compensate for the lack of decoration. My wanting it to be a physical rather than a graphic interaction was important, given that the song is about a kind of physical and mental relationship. I wanted to suggest a touch. To put something on top seemed overly laboured.
CW That is subverting the notion of wallpaper. You don't have to look at wallpaper in a way the viewer will have to look at yours to get its message. The message is there on a normal wallpaper, in the motifs and patterns, in a visual language most people understand. It goes straight in, which is what wallpaper is supposed to do. Your pieces requires the viewer to look.
AM Embossing is integral to this piece. Can you discuss the historical contexts of embossing?
CW These products were expensive but they were not as expensive as the leathers they imitated. They brought something that would have been unaffordable to a new middle class market. I'll give you an example of this development. In Japan, imitation leathers had been made for some time. They looked more like fabric than leather, but they were imitating leather. When Japan opened to the West it became fashionable to have Japanese goods, and these papers were imported as exotic novelties. At the same time people here were making imitation leathers and the two things cross fertilised in the ways they looked and were made. An Englishman had a factory in Yokohama to produce imitation leather papers for export into Europe, largely produced using engraved rollers. These things were decorated with painting or foils either before they were embossed or after, probably both. In France, they were made using a plate on a press and again decorated. Machine embossing, done with rollers, was not as heavy or as deep as what could be done on presses. These led to other things, such as imitation plasterwork made by using moulds to produce architectural decorations, such as ceiling roses. Once there was one development, other things happened enabling the development of different products. Sonia's paper is deep compared to today's rollered embosses. Plates aren't used now. Most raised decorations now are made from vinyl, printed with a medium so that when they go through heat, the vinyl expands to give the emboss. The edges achieved are not as fine as plates and it demands a large run.
AM There seems an ambiguity about touch. The paper seems to push out from the wall, and with the visual aspect so reduced, the paper's physical presence and the pressure that created it become more apparent. Like the pressure of a memory. The touch you elicit from your audience is from the outside. This suggests an ambiguous separation.
SB Yes, partially. It's about black skin being fetishised in a different way to the hidden fetish. Black skin is always visible. I was thinking of the paper in these terms, that the wall's skin is the paper. I kept thinking of those raised skin tattoos. The attachment to the body is metaphorical rather than literal. Touching skin is there but it isn't actually skin but the covering of a room. It is visible and invisible at the same time, like the remembered song, and its presence at all times is important.
AM The repetition in the song plays on the repeated patterns of wallpaper, but the song seems to work differently. The wallpaper's repeated pattern disguises each element's particularity. The repetition in the song accentuates the differences progressing along verse and chorus. Could you talk about the relationship between the wallpaper and the song lyrics?
SB: The song is from the early seventies, a type of romantic reggae called 'Lover's Rock'. It was popular in a subcultural way, heard at West Indian house parties. When I remembered this song, I remembered the whole thing, the whole lyric. I was amazed at that fullness. I imagine other people will also remember. The other thing about 'Lover's Rock' tracks was that the dance is an intense and intimate dance done against the wall. That is the relationship, the erotic dynamic that happens with this kind of song. The invisible and the visible aspects are built into the song but also built into the piece as a wallpaper. After a party, there would be marks around the room, where people rubbed against the wall, the after-effects of people's presences.
AM With an embossed paper, the viewer can't stand back but has to touch the wall. It is different, in that touching is not dancing, but there is an eroticism to touch.
SB There is an invitation to touch, or push it, if someone wanted to do that. It would be in line with the lyrics, which talk about damage in some way, and I don't mind inviting that possibility. Not just that people touch, but what they then do, how hard they press, all those things often are left open. The song implies this. It is a tortured song, an upbeat tune but macabre lyrics.
AM The pressure of embossing seems to push up from the wall, eliciting a response of a touch from the other side. But there is a separation between the two, where you unroll the paper.
SB It is implied in the pressure of getting the text out, there is some kind of force.
CW: There is another aspect of the subversion of wallpaper. In Western culture this decorative object requires its readers to understand the terms of its language automatically. What you are doing is using something that members of white Western culture have no knowledge of, and to a certain extent it is that which is pressing out - is clashing the understanding and the non-understanding of the meaning - and subverting wallpaper's benign image.
SB I've seen wallpapers that were not benign or unpolitical, in particular one celebrating Queen Victoria's fiftieth anniversary. These glorify an imperial past.
AM Do you see a reciprocal relationship, where pieces like Sonia's work back into the way that people see more traditional wallpapers?
CW I may be cynical, but my answer is no. There is a reluctance of most people to look at wallpaper in any way other than as a decorative element in their own homes. I am sure there are reasons for this that are implied in almost everything we've said. I think that wallpaper is so important that we can't bear to examine what it means and why we use it. If we did, we'd question almost everything by implication.
AM It recalls what we talked about earlier, of wallpaper as a surface that people see through, that they use to convey social aspirations or something that isn't visible.
CW I would say that they are using it to obfuscate, to make something invisible.
AM Invisible or transparent in that one stops seeing the materials that carry the message, and all people register is the unproblematised message. Sonia's work makes that surface very apparent. One has to be aware not only of the message, but the way it is conveyed.
SB The reference goes back to wallpapers generally. It is like the magician's illusion. You are in awe of it, but you don't know how it is done, or what it is. I am enthralled by wallpaper's capacity to do a number of things at the same time, but to remain obscure about what it is doing.
CW I don't think people recognise that. They might say that a wallpaper affected them when they were a child, or it made them feel ill or whatever. They see that as particular to themselves, but they don't recognise that wallpaper does that to everyone. It doesn't only represent our culture, but is one of its building blocks. How do you disentangle all of that?
SB Maybe it reveals things we don't know what to do with.