Wall to Wall

About

Wall to Wall is a short-run exhibition of artists' works inspired by the legacy and spirit of Kurt Schwitters. Although the pieces on show were originally commissioned for Film and Video Umbrella's online showcase MerzBank, the opportunity to present them in proximity to Schwitters' famous Merz Barn wall at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle adds a new focus to the relationship between the digital and material that was a feature of that project, and to the interplay between transience and permanence, between the disposable and the durable, that was so central to Schwitters' aesthetic. Alec Finlay's ‘vocable-orchard (HRV)', a text-based digital animation inspired by Schwitters' sneeze-poems, is reconfigured with additional prints and objects, whereas Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson's ‘From/An', originally conceived as a series of digital downloads, is presented, under glass, in a classic museum vitrine. These pieces are supplemented by two new works, which will also be premiered on the MerzBank site. George Barber's Life Fell to Earth is a haunting and evocative twelve-minute video collaged together from random material found on the internet, including memorial pages and other personal tributes posted to YouTube and elsewhere. Alluding to one of Schwitters' lesser-known faces, as the author of playfully absurdist children's tales, Andrea Luka Zimmerman's Merzschmerz is a series of short recordings of young children reciting these stories from memory. Also featuring work by Guy Moreton.