Unrecounted Exhibition
Name: Unrecounted- a photographic exhibition by Guy Moreton
Date: 29 March – 5 May 2012
Time: Solent Showcase opening hours- please call +44(0)23 8031 9602/9639
Location: Solent Showcase, Sir James Matthews Building, Southampton Solent University, 157-187 Above Bar Street
Guy Moreton is a senior lecturer at Solent University. In Unrecounted Moreton re-examines the work of the artist Kurt Schwitters, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and writer W.G Sebald, each of whom made major breakthroughs in their field. Moreton's visual practice imaginatively reinvents the way major thinkers have studied nature, incorporating native landscapes to express their complex thinking and personalities. In this exhibition Moreton's work on these three significant thinkers are brought together for the first time. His beautiful photographic re-evocations come about through his practice of walking in the footsteps of the thinkers and imagining each of their relationships to the original landscapes of Suffolk (Sebald), Norway (Wittgenstein) and the Lake District (Schwitters). Unrecounted is the first solo exhibition in Solent Showcase.
Moreton's vivid large-scale photographic works observe the winter landscape and overgrown apple ochard of the Cylinders estate in Langdale where Kurt Schwitters spent his final years working on his fourth and last Merzbau before his death in 1948. Schwitters had previously lived and worked in Norway, almost crossing paths with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 –1951), who lived on and off in Skjolden at the inner end of the Sognerfjord. Moreton's photographs of the ruins of Wittgenstein's house allow for a contemplative thought journey, not dissimilar to the implied narratives and tangents suggested in the writing of W.G Sebald (1944 – 2001) who's novel and travelogue The Rings of Saturn form the starting point for Moreton's other works in this exhibition.
To celebrate this exhibition, a publication with a newly commissioned essay by the acclaimed and award winning British writer and literary critic Robert Macfarlane will be published and be available from the gallery.