Tag: Kurt Schwitters

We have been travelling around France, basing ourselves in Paris, Lyon, Clermont Ferrand, Avignon and Cagnes sur mer. It’s a lovely adventure, visiting places for the first time and revisiting some favourites too.

As we travelled, I’m reminded of Kurt Schwitters – who sometimes used bus tickets (and other bits and pieces you inevitably pick up when you travel) in his art. I began to think about using a collage of our various tickets to try and represent our journey.

I figured I would try and cut shapes from tickets then try and match them all up into a perfect fitting jigsaw of travel. I sat at the table in our apartment in Clermont Ferrand and began. I cut the first shape – easy peasy. I began to cut more shapes and quickly realised that this was proving much more tricky than I first imagined. The light was poor and I had a small pair of scissors; the harder I tried – the poorer the fit between the pieces became. I cut and fiddled and positioned and repositioned, getting nowhere.

What you see here is the result of about four hours work – four hours! There’s really not much more to say about this scrap of work except that it really brought home to me the notion of ‘the point of the journey is not to arrive’. This odd endeavour has left me with a big stack of travel junk which I plan to revisit and try to create some kind of collage/mixed media work with. For now though – I need a break from bus and train tickets.