Helen Petts

Artist filmmaker Helen Petts explores the later years of Kurt Schwitters' life and work through landscape, collage, sound and walking, following the German artist's journey to Ambleside in the Lake District via a remote island in Norway, to escape Nazi persecution because of his 'degenerate' art and his epilepsy.

In the spirit of Schwitters' sound poetry, the film features leading experimental musicians Sylvia Hallett, Adam Bohman, Roger Turner and Phil Minton improvising with found objects and vocal sounds, creating a dialogue of surround sound and image.

Petts' work often involves walking in remote locations, establishing a relationship between the landscape and her own body and its limitations. Her film explores rhythms, textures and surfaces in the landscape and the music, referencing Schwitters' work from this period and archive photographs.

The installation's title refers to Schwitters' description of how he worked with his collage materials.