- Venue
- Merz Barn (Cumbria)
- Location
- South West England
DFW undertook a residency at Kurt Schwitter’s Merz Barn in Cumbria, supported by the Go and see: Art Party bursary from a-n The Artist Information Company. Merz Barn (Elterwater) was Schwitter’s final pioneering ‘Merz’ installation, and is currently a unique restoration project in the hands of the Littoral Arts Trust.
Schwitters, we believe, had an inspiring attitude to art-making: By trusting his intuition to make work (despite all odds), applying Dadaist theory relevant to the time (although not too much) and allowing for chance encounters – such as the discovery of the Merz Barn itself. Our idea was to interrogate the site using our shared methodology of finding a balance between intuition, theory and chance. Whilst we wanted to learn more about Schwitters’ work, the residency also helped compound our distinct areas of art practice under a common ethos, whilst simply supporting each other to make work.
DFW made a number of subtle collaborative interventions, such as the frosted ‘Blue Vision’ window stickers, which took on a ghostly presence whilst also providing an interactive potential for future guests (they have since been popping up in Bristol). Visual documentation of our activities and research will inform a series of postcards that will be available at our exhibition Ded. Reckoning at the Bristol Biennial. We also recorded conversations and sounds, which are currently being edited to make a podcast. The combined focus of collective activity and enthusiasm encouraged us to make individual works too:
Through exploring the new territory, Alice produced a “computer game inspired performance-to-camera” addressing ideas of fantasy and play, culminating in gif animation and series of photographs. Noticing the abundance of animals on site and the rabbit’s “thrivival” [thrive and survival], she even played with the idea of trapping her own meal, going so far as to construct a hazel copice arapuca trap. However, she realised there were many bunnies hopping around for a reason – this site is a delicately balanced wildlife sanctuary, as Ian and Celia of the Littoral Arts Trust, have conscientiously maintained.
No man can create fantasy alone. Sooner or later it will run dry on him, and only by the constant study of nature will he be able to replenish it and keep it fresh. (Kurt Schwitters)
Upon arrival Amy noticed the rhododendron bushes bursting with colours: red, yellow – but not blue. Inspired by Bauhaus’ visual grammar, Amy suspended a succession of sculptural forms from a singular tree branch, using blue vinyl to complete the primary colours in 3D shapes – which were then photographed. Amy also confronted notions of ‘slickness’ within art and crafts, and discovered that the DIY aesthetic gives an intended quality to her work i.e. if she seamlessly altered spaces, they would not be so interesting. Schwitters also had an affinity with this:
“The bourgeois loves slickness, Schwitters hates them. He leaves his edges rough, his surfaces uneven. He realises that the created object is always an approximation to the imagination’s conception, and that it is only the fuzzy and irrelevant intellect that would like to give precision to the organic reality of art.”(Herbert Read)
Azusa utilised the residency to openly experiment, but she also intended to address the idea of “crossing a real and imagined line”. She brought with her a robust mirrored strip of plastic, and took it for walks in the surrounding landscape and on the Merz Barn site. She reconfigured the line in the studio-space to create contrasting geometric and loose shapes. These sculptural interventions had a ‘stitched and sliced’ effect, and the images an almost photomontaged quality, provoking metaphorical contemplation. Azusa had a revelation “rather than being a boundary, a line can be perceived as a connector”. Another parallel, Schwitter’s and Dadaist’s were also concerned with dissolving boundaries: “All values exist only in so far as they are related to one another”.
Laurie experimented with making egg tempura paint, by grinding up local materials in situ (red earth, peat, charcoal, ash). She was also intrigued by the role of a negative shape ‘a slot’ in the history of the Merz Barn. The sculpted Merzbau wall itself was inserted through a slot cut into the roof of the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle. She enjoyed the slot as something you can look in or out of, as featured again in the diagonal wall in the Merz Barn to view Schwitter’s Chicken & Egg sculpture through. Laurie was also fascinated by the Nazi’s ‘degenerate artist exhibition’, in which Schwitter’s and other’s works were hung at jaunty angles to undermine their integrity, validity and ultimately freedom of expression. The egg tempura rectangular samples played with this idea, and became more about perspective.
It was hugely beneficial for us to spend time together, in a rustic space away from everyday distractions without the constraint of having to make final pieces. The work produced will significantly influence our next exhibition and future projects. It was also very inspiring to meet Ian and Celia from the Littoral Trust and others within their network. We have a lot of material to take away and work through from our “Go and See” trip.
Please visit our website www.dowsingforwater.org.uk for more photo-documentation of the trip. For more information about Merz Barn, please visit website www.merzbarn.net
