After Schwitters

In 1947 the exiled German artist Kurt Schwitters died at Ambleside in the English Lake District. In the months leading up to his death he had been working on his major project the Merzbarn.
Due to ill health he was only able to complete one wall of this installation and this was subsequently removed and installed in the Hatton Gallery at the University of Newcastle.

Since his death, the site, comprising a number of small stone buildings situated within a dense woodland, has been largely left to its own devices, untouched and for most of the year unvisited, except by the occasional Schwitters scholar or curator. What was to have been a landscaped environment around the Merzbarn has returned to nature and become a haven for wildlife, the buildings are full of detritus and the evidential remains of visits from the aforementioned wildlife.

Yet despite the toll of the passing years the site retains a magical, at times almost tangible, presence. Standing in the woods, alone in the sticky silence of summer, it is possible to think back and imagine what might have been.

Plans are now underway to preserve the site for scholars and artists, to create a centre where artists can get away from the pressures of the outside world (when you’re stood in the woods the ‘outside world’ can seem a very long way away!). I hope if such a venture is successful that it doesn’t detract from what the site has become, and that the magic isn’t lost in the process.

The following images are my response to the site, they are not meant to be an all encompassing ‘overview’ of the location, but rather, hopefully, interesting images that evoke something of the site’s atmosphere and of its original intent. Maybe images that if Schwitters was alive today he would respond to with a sense of excitement as to the future potential of his site.