In 1962, Jackie Kennedy extensively renovated and refurbished the White House, installing a 19th century hand-printed wallpaper ‘Les Vues de L’Amerique du Nord’, which is still made by the French firm Zuber & Cie, in the Diplomatic Room where it has acted as the backdrop to events with foreign dignitaries and press conferences ever since.

Glasgow artist Nathan Coley (born 1967), who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2007, has created light boxes using this wallpaper with short texts from a variety of North American literary and news sources, inviting the viewer to ‘reflect on ideas of utopia, identity and our relationship to place’ in his recent exhibition ‘The Future Is Inside Us, It’s Not Somewhere Else’ at the Parafin in London.  In Edinburgh he is perhaps best known for his illuminated text ‘There will be no Miracles Here’ in the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

He continued the theme with his film ‘Another Lecture’ which, tongue in cheek, looks at the amount of thought that has (or has not) gone into temporary and accidental structures, and trying to describe them as if considered works of art (at which point you suspend belief), but asking a very serious question about how people can influence and construct their urban environment, rather than let it happen by accident.