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 now 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 almost impossible not to think back and imagine what might have been.  (continues...)