Coffee-Table Notes

The spirit of Kurt Schwitters looms large over MERZ, the exhibition and artists’ residency space housed in a former lemonade factory and surrounding outhouses in the village of Sanquhar, Dumfries and Galloway. Founded by Dave Rushton in 2009, MERZ takes Schwitters’ collagist approach drawn from his cutting up the German word, ‘Kommerz’ (commerce) to create something new.   The notions of ‘Reconstruction and Fabrication’ that are at the heart of MERZ are best exemplified by Schwitters’ Merzbau (Merzhouse), whereby several rooms of his family home were transformed utilising assorted detritus. Schwitters went on to create similar constructions in Lysaker, near Oslo, then in Cumbria, where he was exiled after fleeing Nazi Germany prior to his death in 1948.   Rushton learnt about Schwitters’ story while visiting Cumbria, and has applied his inspiration’s aesthetic to his own MERZ through an ongoing series of residencies that culminate in exhibitions by resident artists in the gallery or fo