The Uncanny World of Interiors 

Wallpaper installation by Mathew Meadows and sculptures by Charlotte Squire

“For this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.”
Sigmund Freud-‘The Uncanny’

Francis Hair Fashions Gallery presents Matthew Meadows’ and Charlotte Squire’s first joint show. The show investigates the tension between the familiar furnishings of home and the dissonant associations that they bring when re-confronted and re-deployed as art. By appropriating the marginalised materials of interior décor for their artwork, Meadows collages found wallpapers that hover on the brink of aesthetic pleasure, whilst Squire assembles mysterious collections of abandoned lamps and ‘occasional’ tables.

Reclaiming their material from the many outlets for society’s discarded, outmoded things i.e. the charity shop, car boot sale, skip and pavement, Meadows and Squire are drawn to that ‘previously enjoyed’ aspect of appropriation. By selecting sub-category home furnishings which are neither antique nor Icon, they reassign their use from within the domestic sphere. Nothing particularly subversive there perhaps, but reminding us that the domestic intimacy of that temporary place we call home is assumed, a cuckoo’s nest of objects, feelings, memories, often other people’s – simultaneously the heimlich and unheimlich, from Freud’s theory of ‘the Uncanny’.

Meadows installs three collaged wallpapers from mass-produced and indifferently designed rolls. As with Squire’s arrangements, repetition (repeat) is an essential component of the aesthetic. His Repeated motifs help set up a particular kind of looking; the glance – superficial, unsteady and fleeting. His compositions deliberately exacerbate what he calls the ‘skittery eye thing’. Within Meadows’ arrangements of motif, palate and texture, counter intuitive choices subtly confound this promised continuity, producing a discomforting double-take. What at first is seen as bosomy heraldic shield designs carry ornamental devices reminiscent of reproductive organs or playing cards.

Meanwhile, Squire presents possible lives for her dispossessed objects. All her assemblages constitute a quite particular collection although none of the components are collectibles as such – in fact it is central to the work that they aren’t. Mostly they exist in the realm of the outdated commonplace which perversely makes them all the more curious – and recalls Baudrillard’s compelling analysis of collecting, wherein: “the pursuit of possession finds fulfilment and the everyday prose of objects is transformed into poetry, into a triumphant unconscious discourse”. Squire’s practice both points to and exemplifies this through strings of illuminated lampshades with upturned and stacked veneered tables, the objects finally liberated from their use become a quasi constructivist sculpture of imitation walnut, mahogany and teak; an Arte Povera for our consumer culture.

Matthew Meadows was featured recently in Modern Painters as ‘The Wallpaper Man’. His work can be seen in the V&A and is exhibiting in ‘Artists’ Wallpapers’ at The Whitworth Museum in 2009.Charlotte Squire is a Goldsmiths MA Graduate and co-ordinator of ‘The Surgery’ gallery in Nunhead. She has recently exhibited in the’ I Love Peckham’ festival and the Bussey Building.

This will be FHF Gallery’s Fifth show and will run in conjunction with the Wandsworth Artists’ Open House 2008.Situated below a former ladies hair salon, Francis Hair Fashions Gallery is committed to exhibiting the work of contemporary artists at all stages of their careers.