Solent Home | SEA Home | About | Policies

Southampton Solent University Logo

Solent Electronic Archive
SEA HOMEPAGE Back to SEA homepage

SOLENT ELECTRONIC ARCHIVE

  • Home
  • About
  • Policies
  • Latest Additions
  • Search
  • Browse by Year
  • Browse by Subject
  • Browse by Faculty
  • Browse by Creator

USER MENU

Login

Wall to Wall

Moreton, Guy. Wall to Wall. [Show/Exhibition]

[img] HTML (Film and Video Umbrella London)
wall-to-wall

Download (17Kb)
[img]
Preview
Image (JPEG)
Hatton.PV.jpg

Download (787Kb) | Preview

Abstract

Wall to Wall is an exhibition of artists’ works inspired by the legacy and spirit of Kurt Schwitters. The pieces on show were originally commissioned for Film and Video Umbrella’s online showcase MerzBank. For this show, the commissioned artworks are presented in proximity to Schwitters’ famous Merz Barn wall at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle. Adding a new focus, this exhibition highlights the relationship between the digital and material that was a feature of that project. The exhibition underlines the interplay between transience and permanence, between the disposable and the durable, that was so central to Schwitters’ aesthetic. Schwitters’ famous Merz Barn wall acts as a backdrop to these discussions. An ever-changing canvas for the forays into three-dimensional collage he attempted in his studio – experiments that were an influential forerunner of what we might now call ‘installation’ – the wall has become a strange kind of touchstone. Rescued from its increasingly dilapidated home in the Lake District, its subsequent relocation to Newcastle in the 1960s has had the knock-on effect of turning what Schwitters intended as a continually fluctuating test-bed into a hallowed museum piece, albeit one that is a lasting reminder of the prescience of Schwitters’ art. These days, as if to prove the universality of the practice and principle of collage, millions of people fix everyday ephemera and personal mementoes on to walls, although the ‘walls’ that they pin to or post to are increasingly virtual (on Facebook, and other social media platforms). This phenomenon is evoked in the exhibition’s title (which alludes to the actual wall’s physical transposition from one geographical site to another, but also hints at this ever-expanding virtual architecture, and the ubiquity and superabundance of this contemporary image-universe). These considerations inform both the subject of the pieces, and the way they are exhibited in the gallery, incorporating wall-based, screen-based and other modes of display.

Item Type: Show/Exhibition
Subjects: SOCIAL SCIENCE > Cultural Studies
ARTS, MEDIA AND HUMANITIES > Fine Art
ARTS, MEDIA AND HUMANITIES > Graphic Design
ARTS, MEDIA AND HUMANITIES > History
ARTS, MEDIA AND HUMANITIES > Literature and Writing
ARTS, MEDIA AND HUMANITIES > Media Production
ARTS, MEDIA AND HUMANITIES > Photography
Faculties: Faculty of Creative Industries and Society > School of Art and Design
Depositing User: Guy Moreton
Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2014 11:42
Last Modified: 11 Dec 2014 11:42
URI: http://ssudl.solent.ac.uk/id/eprint/3120

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Disclaimer | Privacy policy © Southampton Solent University

Main switchboard tel: 023 8031 9000