Sculptor, painter, printmaker, collagist, poet, diarist, graphic designer, publisher, filmmaker and musician, German-born Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998) was not an artist who tolerated boundaries. In seeking to pulverize them, he elevated the processes by which things happen, embracing accidents, mutations, and accretions of detail over time; inviting nature to have its way with unstable mediums, including fruit, chocolate, and sugar; and perhaps most boldly, inviting the dilution of his own authorship through constant, intensive collaboration with other artists. Those partners included such significant figures as Richard Hamilton, Emmett Williams, Arnulf Rainer, and Hermann Nitsch. But it was Roth's long and symbiotic collaboration with his own son, artist Björn Roth, that stands as testament to the enormous and enduring potency of his restless, relentless process.

​

From the early 1980s barbuilding became an integral part of Dieter Roth's artistic endeavour. Working from their studio in Iceland, Björn Roth and Oddur Roth (son and grandson of Dieter Roth) are continuing this as an element within their cross-generational practice.

​

In the summer of 2014 Björn and Oddur were the first artists to be invited to work in the Maltings studio space at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. During their residency, they focused on creating a fully-functioning, site-specific bar that now forms an integral part of the Roth Bar & Grill, the gallery's on-site restaurant.