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Artist creates credit crunch collage out of newspapers
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent24 Sep 2009
It is the obvious artwork for a penny-pinching recession — a piece that recycles newspapers to explore the credit crunch.
At the Serpentine Gallery from next week, 83-year-old artist Gustav Metzger will ask people to create the work from his archive of thousands of newspapers stretching back to 1995.
Visitors will select pages relating to three topics — the credit crunch, extinction and the way we live now — and attach them to a magnetic board in a collage of contemporary concerns.
The installation, Mass Media: Yesterday and Today, has been conceived for the Serpentine inspired by his Eichmann and the Angel piece, made four years ago. It will be the centrepiece of the German born artist's biggest exhibition — Gustav Metzger, Decades 1959-2009 — also including the Historic Photographs series, which responded to major events of the 20th century.
The Serpentine's co-director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, said: “It's astonishing that after his work as a key member of the avant-garde and on ecological issues, he is only now getting the credit he is due in the city where he has lived for 70 years.”
The exhibition opens on Tuesday and runs until 8 November.
