When the walls take flight

Thursday 18th September saw the opening of my hand printed wallpaper and origami birds installation at Castle House. As the doors to the ex-department store opened and the walls rippled in the breeze,  I held my breath.

Working with Castle House has been an excercise in patience, trust and adaptability. The perfectionist in me has groaned over the wrinkles, warps and wefts in the walls. But now, as the wallpaper stands brazenly facing the central staircase, I can begin to see it as others may do. The lights cast beautiful shadows across the walls, catching the tips of the birds. The pattern in the paper moves with your eye as you navigate the curved wall. People seem drawn to the birdbox I placed in the central panel asking for orders/expressions of interest to be posted inside. I watch secretly, hoping they comply.

Of course there are errors and there is so much more I wish I could have done. I wanted to cover the ceiling in birds over the course of the show. As if they were ripping the walls apart and flying up the staircase. For me, the piece remains too decorative and still. But I am limited by the time that has been shortened due to unforseen structural problems and the fact that I cannot access the ceiling during open hours. Instead I plan to make more birds and attach them via the walls this week.

The great thing about doing an exhibition though, however much you feel you have failed to do, is that the idea you started out with grows and changes over time. So that by the time you finish the show you have something new, and hopefully improved, based on where you started. For me, this is a chance to pilot an idea that has yet to be fully realised. I hope to find another space, one to which I can bring all my experience and knowledge gained during the Castle House show, and create a wallpaper installation that pushes the tensions between art and interior space even further.

Over the next week I intend to use this blog as a space to note down thoughts surrounding the content and research of this piece of work. Moving from a journal of practical documentation to one of insight, commentary and speculation.

You can see When the Walls take Flight at

Castle House, Angel Street, Sheffield.

18th to 28th September, 10:30am to 5pm daily.

My wallpaper for Sheffield Bazaar at Castle House is inspired by the up/down motion of the lifts it surrounds. With two opposing arrows against the tops of the doors which signal the movement of repetative behaviour, once enacted in the busy store of Sheffield Co-Ooperative, the vertical arrangement of my pattern is a hypnotic affirmation of the remaining space. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Situated at the bottom of the spiral staircase, the paper might be luxurious decor or a forgotten memory. It is made of two tiles: birds and squares filled with stripes. Nature and geometry. Nature for the wildness of the building’s abandoned interior, flown through by dust, rubble and now my swallow like creatures, who echo the same fligh path as the previous public journeying on the lifts. Geometry for the 60’s modernist grids of shape, line and blockiness. Castle House boasts columns and walkways and boxed rooms from floor to ceiling.

I wanted to play with the idea of a vertical pattern set against a decidedly horizontal wall. Birds that flock outward from the walls will eventually deviate from their path in origami form.

Making the paper was the resultof a carefully mapped process and an unpredicatble rhythm. Ink, print, pull. Ink, print, pull. Ink, print, pull. Hang, Repeat. Coming back again and again to fill in the areas of unmarked surface where the ink was waiting to dry. Like laying a table first by fork, then knife, then spoon and circumnavigating each place before moving onto the next.

In the studios at APG Works Sheffield, I watched and learned the art of a lull and a flurry – slow waiting and methodical movement, furious printing at the fast hurried rolls of paper. I hope this is echoed in my work as the walls are soothed with the familiarity of a vertical motion and made alive with the frantic flight of birds.