Matthew Beach: William Morris and Roberto Burle Marx on Holiday at Charleston House

The wallpaper produced for Matthew Beach’s exhibition The Herbarium’s Shadow is available to buy as an artist edition.

This wallpaper pattern draws influence from Matthew Beach’s lived experience, artistic practice, and research into visual imaginaries of tropical and subtropical plants. The Herbarium’s Shadow presented a public culmination of research and process predicated on the intersection of two events: a home renovation and an artist residency in the Amazon rainforest.

While trekking through the jungle, Matthew Beach learned about the symbiotic relationships between Philodendron species and different species of scarab beetles and ants. This wallpaper pattern works to bring these ideas into the domestic sphere, and also asking how new interspecies relations might be possible between houseplants such as Philodendron, and scarab beetles such as Geotrupes mutator (violet dor beetle). The violet dor beetle makes an appearance within the wallpaper on the Philodendron flowers (or inflorescences). Such interspecies possibilities are relevant as recent reports by Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee have highlighted the increasing decline of UK Dung beetles, whose ecological niches provide vital ecosystem services such as reducing pasture fouling and soil compaction.

The wallpaper comes in square sheets (1.25 x 1.25m), which are printed to order.

You can find out more about Matthew Beach’s exhibition here.

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Product Information

William Morris and Roberto Burle Marx on Holiday at Charleston House
Matthew Beach, 2021
standard wallpaper, 120gsm
sheet dimensions: 125cm x 125cm
£36 per sheet