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.