Simon Moretti’s work explores the idea of collage and speaks to traditions of collage and montage dating back to the nineteenth century. Moretti has been included in group shows at Sprüth Magers, London and Munich; Deitch Proejcts, New York; La Maison Rouge, Paris; Swiss Institute, New York; and the 2006 Liverpool Biennial. He is also the co-founder of Dadadandy, a curatorial collaboration between Moretti and artist Paul Herber-Percy.

These images are part of a larger series entitled Scanners, in which Moretti arranges fragments on the bed of a scanner to create carefully constructed compositions. Most of the fragments are photographic images cut from magazines and other sources. Moretti maintains the implied tactility of traditional collage, with its physical layers of material, leaving visible shadows, creases and jagged cut marks. The scanner functions in some sense as the ‘glue’ holding together the pieces of a collage, or might also be understood as a camera used to re-photograph the assembled fragments of a photo-montage. The scans are then printed as traditional, black-and-white, gelatin silver prints. Along with reproductions of art both ancient and modern, images of cameras recur in the series, reinforcing the theme of reproducibility with which they engage. Moretti’s work would strengthen the V&A’s holdings of photo-collage, complementing the work of artists such as Claude Cahun and Angus McBean. It would also relate to collaged work and photo-collage posters held by the Prints section, including work by Barbara Kruger.