Front Design Company "Rat Wallpaper"

This particular piece of work is perhaps one of my favourite pieces of alternative wallpapers I have seen. The artists placed rolls of plain white wallpaper in a cage with some rats, knowing that the rats would inevitably gnaw at the paper making holes through it. As the paper is unrolled, a lace effect emerges that is entirely the rats' design. This "Rat Wallpaper" is then hung in front of existing wallpaper, revealing small sections of it to the viewer. This way there is a comparison between traditional decorative design and contemporary art.
The piece challenges the usual role of decoration and indeed challenges how decoration can be created. Front Design Company is in a way handing over the design aspects of their wallpaper to a more spontaneous creator, removing their own control and allowing risk to take over.
Like the majority of Front's work, what stands out the most with this is its humour, and it is this refreshing lighthearted take on the subject that makes it such a favourite of mine.

Linda Florence "Sugar Floors"

Linda Florence is an arist I have become interested in while researching for my university dissertation. Her work, like mine, is based around interiors, especially wallpaper. This particular piece named "One of a Kind Tea Dance" was installed in 2008 in the V&A museum as part of the artist's "Sugar Floors" project.
The piece is a floral wallpaper-like print applied to the floor of the gallery using white sugar and presumably a stencil. Ballroom dancers then took to the floor; their graceful movements shifting the original sugar pattern, creating a new pattern with the traces of their dance steps and turns.
By doing this, the artist is allowing an element of risk into the work as it is not certain where the dancers will go, how the pattern will change and whether the new pattern will be effective or not. With much of her work, Florence challenges the normal concept of wallpaper and pattern. Here she pushes the boundaries of the medium by placing a wallpaper pattern on the floor. Why should we stop when the wall reaches the floor or ceiling?
I think this piece is extremely beautiful and delicate and is a refreshing way of using the medium of wallpaper when so many others use it as a tool for political comment. However it is questionable as to whether the piece can still be considered a wallpaper when it is placed on the floor. But then again, who can possibly say?!
It was interesting that I came across this piece after I produced my work for the No.5 Balmoral project as the basic concept is so similar. It has however increased my interest in interactive patterns and decoration, and Florences other work has opened up many new ideas of manipulating the medium of wallpaper.

Christopher Pearson "Environment sensitive wallpaper"

For many wallpaper designers and artists, William Morris has been a huge influence. This is clear with artist Christopher Pearson and his piece "Environment sensitive wallpaper". This design is almost a replica of Morris's "Willow Boughs" 1887, with the same repeats and very similar colours. However, the wallpaper pattern is created in a way so that it reacts with UV exposure and the temperature in the room that it is displayed in. The effect is that the pattern develops 'naturally' over time the more exposure it gets; and appears to grow and spread over the paper. Presumably this is done using heat and light sensitive paper or paint but there is little information given about this.
The fact that it's reactants are heat and UV exposure poses questions on the wider environment and the effects we have on the planet and the environments we live in.

I would like to find out more about the technical methods the artist has used as it would be very useful for me to use as a method of conveying my own wallpaper designs and ideas on horticultural patterns.