Wallpaper Commission – Emma Molony

2023-24

This wallpaper installation has been designed and created by Emma Molony, an artist printmaker who lives and works in Exeter and East Devon.

Commissioned by Arts and Culture, this striking wallpaper was inspired by 19th century engravings of works by JMW Turner and is now on display in the Queen's Building on the University's Streatham Campus.

Two hundred years after JMW Turner visited and sketched Exeter, Emma followed in his footsteps and drew scenes along the River Exe. She chose three of these views and another on Streatham Campus as the basis for the wallpaper design.

Printing copies of the original Turner engravings onto transparent acetate films, she cut designs from these images, scratching into them, combining and overlapping them, arranging them to make four collages of the Exeter scenes, made entirely from the marks of the engravings. This collage design forms the darker layer of the screenprinted wallpaper.

For the citrus-coloured layer beneath, Emma used her own drawings of plants, trees and grasses following the style of the engravings as inspiration. She screenprinted both layers of the design onto painted lining paper in a repeat pattern.

See the wallpaper installation during the academic year 2023-24, in the Queen's Building, Streatham Campus, outside the Senior Common Room.