Gathering was an architectural intervention commissioned by the Hatton Gallery and designed and built by Julia Heslop and Ed Wainwright to host the work of other artists. It was inspired by Kurt Schwitters’ Hannover Merz Bau, which included concealed niches dedicated to his artistic heroes. Likewise, Gathering was comprised of an interconnected sequence of ‘grottoes’ assembled from found and given material. Every fortnight during the exhibition an invited artist or researcher was invited to make a new work dedicated to an under-represented female artist working in collage as an expanded, immersive or time-based practice.

The work was part of the Exploding Collage exhibition which explored how avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century expanded the notion of collage into immersive, often ephemeral, formats.

Photo credit: Matthew Pickering