Conversation / ESTD Barras
Interdisciplinary artist Morven Mulgrew and textile artist Jemima Dansey-Wright reflect on the last year of ESTD, their weekly market stall run from The Barras in Glasgow’s East End.
December 2022
ESTD is a weekly market stall run from The Barras in Glasgow’s East End. Founded in 2021 by artist Morven Mulgrew, artist and designer Saskia Pomeroy and textile artist Jemima Dansey-Wright, it is an ever-evolving site for selling locally-made objects, homeware and artwork. Through ESTD, Morven, Saskia and Jemima, not only support artists, craft makers and designers, but expand their own individual practices, working with and playing on the traditional market stall setup, trialling creative ideas and collaborating with others to create an imaginative range of craft and design-focused events.
How did you come together to set up ESTD Barras?
MORVEN: It came about pretty organically. Saskia and I had recently taken a studio at Many Studios, just off Ross Street, and one day I had walked past the outdoor units at the Barras and impulsively popped into the office to see if any were available. I think it came into my head because another potter I know, Camille Bidell, used to have a clay counter at the Barras for a while, so I had some frame of reference. Saskia was into the idea – we had a one-minute business meeting on the street on a sunny afternoon by the sheds – and then we asked Jemima if she’d like to get involved.
JEMIMA: Yes, it all came about by chance. Morven and I have known each other for twenty years and then the three of us ended up together at the same studios in the Barras. I think we were all thinking about having a physical shop at that time and we started ESTD Barras at end of lockdown in 2021.
How do you describe ESTD?
MORVEN: It is primarily exactly what it looks like – a market unit. However, I think because the three of us work in different fields and all are quite collaborative and social, we immediately got into the idea of running fairs, performances and events from the stall as well as weekend market selling. It developed into a curatorial type of offering naturally – although usually the curation comes about in an open-call kind of way.
JEMIMA: The stall acts as a collective, where we collaborate with other makers and produce special events with other artists such as BISC (Barras International Spectacle of Ceramics) with Laura Aldridge and Untinned Animal! with Jamie Bolland. We show artist-made objects but also programme very informal, direct and accessible weekly selling events.
MORVEN: We like to have new folk on the stall all the time. It’s such a beautiful stall. It’s the iconic old lace curtain stall run by Mr.Peden, adorned with lots of romantic graffiti from his daughters over the years, so it acts as a kind of theatrical backdrop to all sorts of things. It’s not a blank space, and it invites a variety of activity within its three walls!
What attracted you to a weekend market platform over that of a more conventional shop front?
MORVEN: Time and money. It’s very cheap, but it’s a physical space for us, so we can have our stuff largely set up from week-to-week like a shop, but with less commitment.
JEMIMA: The Barras is also only open weekends, which is why it is affordable to us.
MORVEN: Yes, weekend selling suits us as we all have other work and family commitments, so it is a way for us to have a physical presence without the commitment of a shop. Financially we can’t risk the overheads, so the stall is perfect. We like to talk about this openly because there is this feeling sometimes that we are all making loads of money from being makers, when in fact it’s hard to make money that way. Really hard!
The way you promote your space and the objects you sell is refreshingly immediate. How has the physical framework of the site informed the way you work as makers and sellers?
MORVEN: It’s so delightful to sell stuff to people in person. That’s been said for the last hundred years by anybody who experiences life in the Barras, but it’s a mega special place. There is a sense of community and the feedback you get on your work is immediate, frank, highly informed and usually pretty hilarious too. I don’t know how so many witty, cultured, creative and on-the-money people can be crammed into such a small part of Glasgow. The craic is amazing on the stall, it’s such enormous fun to work there. We are just glad to be a part of it.
JEMIMA: And, because it’s our stall, there’s no pressure to sell a particular type of product to the shop owner or buyer. Being at ESTD, I’ve been more experimental and tested out ideas just to see how people react and engage with them.
MORVEN: Making work can be a sacred, solitary practice. The stall has given us all an opportunity to sell directly to people – and have that social engagement with our customers – and this informs our work in an immediate way as well as making transactions more personal. It’s a pleasure for me anyway to be able to talk about the work and describe processes and labour to people face-to-face as well.
Do you view projects like ESTD to be a part of your artistic practice?
MORVEN: I do. It’s been a way to bring groups of artists and makers together through fairs, and to incorporate a social, performative approach to selling products.
JEMIMA: I’ve viewed the events and collaborations we’ve held within our space as mini design briefs. These events have then informed my designs for the printed garments I have made and sold at ESTD.
MORVEN: It’s simultaneously a project about creativity, making and art and commerce as well as an actual market stall, which is probably something we could only do at the Barras. By commissioning performers and other satellite projects on the stall, it has been curatorial as well as simply a site for selling.
For those who can’t make it to the market and instead view it through your Instagram, you recreate the sense of a lively, ever-evolving space, where no object sits on the shelf for very long. Does your approach to display differ each week?
JEMIMA: Yes, I guess so – we have to pack and unpack the stall each week so that encourages new displays.
MORVEN: And because we each take a weekend on the stall, it’s been pretty fun to change up the display. We each have our own signature ‘arrangement’ styles and I really enjoy it – the idea of assembling an object in pleasing arrangements doesn’t get tired really! Because we run thematic fairs, which include other people’s work, it forces us to keep thinking creatively about display and about the objects as a whole collection. The feeling of ‘playing shopkeeper’ is something I love about it as well, we have this dinky wee shop and it’s all quite make-believe in an odd way!
The name ESTD derives from the original Barras signage, still seen above your space. Was it important to preserve this slice of Barras history?
JEMIMA: Definitely. We’ve been conscious that we wanted to work with the space rather than redesign it. The shelves and walls of our stall are covered with graffiti by the various hands of the Peden family (all of whom we have met in the last 18 months, telling us the history of the unit!)
MORVEN: We love the grafitti on the wooden shelves from Mr.Peden’s lovestruck daughters: ‘Lindsay 4 Luke’, ‘Lisa 4 Gerry’ and more. When his daughters popped past one afternoon they told us that Lisa and Gerry are now married but that it didn’t work out with Luke. Calling the stall ESTD was really, in someway, about leaning into the context of what was there already. Why make an expensive sign when someone has made a big board with a gold drop shadow painting above your stall already?! Of course, we then realised that there are probably a lot of other units with signage including ‘ESTD’, so it’s probably not that logical – ha ha! People are always getting confused about where we are!
You have hosted several radio shows with your neighbour Clydebuilt Radio this year, with a hugely diverse mix of music, as well as a focus on the makers you support and events that you run. Are different forms of communication central to promoting ESTD?
JEMIMA: As we’re on the same street as Clydebuilt, it all feels quite organic. Any communication we do, I think comes up naturally and definitely riffs on market stall chat. Nostalgia has definitely been a factor, for me anyway. The All Shopper Requests show really chimed with me as I have always loved shopping in places that put the focus on the shopper and celebrated the general FUN to be had in the whole shared experience. I grew up going to shopping centres in Yorkshire, such as Meadowhall in Sheffield. It had Meadowhall TV playing on a huge wall in the food court that showed music and also zoomed in on passing shoppers. This was one of the first places myself and my friends were allowed to visit alone as teenagers, so I’m very nostalgic about it and felt some connections forming when we were putting together the radio shows.
MORVEN: I think what’s been great about doing the radio show is that as well as playing traders’ requests, or requests from makers, we have tried to make the shows relate to specific projects. For example, to coincide with a ceramic fair we organised with Laura Aldridge in October this year, we did an All Potter’s Request Show, with potters invited to participate from outside of Glasgow. Also, it’s really fun being on the radio, I thoroughly recommend it! Clydebuilt are endlessly patient with our lo-fi approach and we get a real kick out of doing it!
Do you have any plans in the pipeline for ESTD 2023?
MORVEN: We are needing to take a wee break early in the year. Saskia is having a baby and Jem and I are actually just totally knackered! So right now, not really. The brilliant thing about the Barras and the stall is that it has the flex to allow for this, which means it can be low pressure – pretty unusual in these times!
Morven Mulgrew is an interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Working across performance, sculpture, costume and design she makes live work, costume and artefact concerned with the body. Interested in the homemade, the hand made, DIY and shonkiness as well as precision, shape and form, she likes abstract absurdities and grandiose gestures. She is a professional amateur and is making it up as she goes along. She makes mistakes.
Jemima Dansey-Wright studied Textiles at Glasgow School of Art. She was recently Artist in Residence at Studio Pavilion. Now working mainly with printed textiles, Jemima is drawn to lo-fi techniques such as block and mono print and the textured marks these techniques produce, as well as the messiness and the immediate and intuitive way artwork can be developed and applied to a range of surfaces.
This year Panel worked with Morven Mulgrew and artist and textiles printer Kate Owens on their project, SKU, an exhibition and retail experience, which explored curatorial ideas around ceramic and textile display. For the project, held at Sierra Metro, Panel commissioned a multi-purpose bag / poster in collaboration with Neil McGuire, and an accompanying text by Mhari McMullan. SKU sought to encounter and reveal the embodied methods of production within Mulgrew and Owen’s individual practices in ceramics and printed textiles respectively. It considered the commercial and social value of their output through an installation which played with the boundaries of retail and exhibition space, display and convention.