Profile – Morag Myerscough
Artist and designer Morag Myerscough talks about her passion for change.
Words by Kay Hill
Change is not something that artist and designer Morag Myerscough particularly dreads – in fact, it seems to energise her, as the last few years have shown. Known for her colourfully exuberant works designed to create a sense of joy and belonging in those who encounter them, Myerscough has transformed her way of life with an unexpected move to the countryside.
Myerscough was born in Holloway, moved to Clerkenwell, then spent 15 years living and working in Hoxton. But, in 2021, she moved to a small village in Surrey. ‘It’s totally not about wanting to live in a village in Surrey,’ she laughs. In fact, it was what a less optimistic personality might have described as making the best of things, as the difficulties of the pandemic and its aftermath made keeping a 4,000 sq ft part-commercial space in the heart of the capital unsustainable. ‘I wanted to cut down my overheads, but when I looked for a house in London with a garden there was nothing equivalent to buy. I would have had to move to something half the size and I need a lot of space to do my work.
‘I used to feel I was tied to London because of meetings, but the ease of things like Teams and Zoom have made it so much more realistic to live somewhere else. I had a cash offer on my house and the next day I saw this idyllic place in Surrey with five acres of land – it’s such a contrast! I talk a lot about belonging, and London is totally who I am and what I am. So I wouldn’t say that Surrey is where I belong, but it’s what I want right now, to live more sustainably in this house with all this space around me.
Morag Myerscough at her reimagined Roman gatehouse at Housesteads Fort on Hadrian’s Wall. Image Credit: English Heritage
‘I don’t think I will live here forever, but I’m so glad that I made this radical, drastic change. It’s too easy to accept the same things all the time when you are older – when you are young you are changing all the time,’ says Myerscough, who is in her late fifties. ‘Why do we feel that need for things to be permanent? Life isn’t really about where you are, but about who you are with. I was always surrounded by people, now it’s my dog Elvis and my partner Luke and lots of trees and grass. I have solar panels and a heat pump, and I almost live off my home-grown vegetables. I wanted to experience a life that was drastically different.’
She has always cared about her environmental choices – she was an early adopter of electric vehicles, buying a G-Wiz 16 years ago when it was definitely a quirky choice (its 50 mile range, bug-eyed style and total lack of safety features won it Auto Express’s Worst Car Ever Award). But the move to the countryside has transformed her relationship with nature. ‘I seem to be quite good at growing things; I’ve had the most incredible year growing lettuces so I can have salad all summer from a couple of plants. I’m learning how the seasons work. The winter seems long here; in London I was not so aware of the seasons. Now, I’ve developed this whole new relationship with nature and dormant time, and the need to do things differently. All these things feed into my thought process by osmosis and make me very conscious of not making things for the sake of making things – my work is so huge.’
Morag Myerscough created two site-specific installations at Compton Verney for their ‘Summer of Colour’ events. Image Credit: Gareth Gardner
Now Myerscough considers the afterlife of her creations before she begins to work – decorated elements are donated to local communities or returned to her for repainting and reuse.
Following an art foundation course at St Martin’s, Myerscough studied a BA in graphic design at St Martin’s (CSM) and then an MA at The Royal College of Art, but much of her large scale work today bridges disciplinary boundaries, transforming urban environments with structures decorated with vivid neon colours. If she had her time again, graphic design might not have been her choice. ‘We were told that it’s really creative and you can do your own thing, but the reality is that you are always working for someone else within their limits. I wanted to push the boundaries and be involved in the whole project.
With her love of bright colour clearly on display, Myerscough poses in front of her colourful flags for the Clean Power campaign. Image Credit: David Parry
I didn’t feel there was a space for me and it didn’t fulfil me.’ The result was that, after a short stint working as a graphic designer, she set up Myerscough Chipchase (in partnership with Jane Chipchase) and, when that ended, she went on her own as Studio My-erscough and started pushing those boundaries for real.
‘I had my place, but I really didn’t like having a place at all – I wanted to be myself! When I started building structures, I wanted to show that because I had been working in 2D [it] didn’t mean I couldn’t do things in 3D.
I had to show people I was doing the work myself, because as a woman people tended to think I couldn’t create these things – people are so conditioned about roles that they would often assume that Luke designed the structures for me.’
With her love of bright colour clearly on display, Myerscough poses in front of her colourful flags for the Clean Power campaign. Image Credit: David Parry
Her upbringing clearly inspires her legendary love of colour – a Bohemian family life, with a mother who was a textile artist and a father who was a classical musician, plus grandparents who were a French milliner and a violinist who had been brought up in a European circus, meant that home was always full of colour, music and life. But it was also a reaction to what lay beyond the front door. ‘London was pretty grey and grim in my younger days. I was surrounded by everything grey and so my love of colour is a response to the environment. I loved it when the fairground came to town on Bank Holidays and we finally saw some colour in the streets.’
Myerscough’s A New Now, both on display and being developed in her studio, is designed to elicit communicative joy and to promote imagination. Image Credit: Thomas Lang
Her latest projects connect back to childhood days. She recently created with the local community an incredible 12m-tall reimagining of a Roman gatehouse at Housesteads Fort on Hadrian’s Wall, called The Future Belongs to What Was As Much As What Is, decorated with graphics panels of words ranging from ‘Desolate’ and ‘Surreal’ to ‘Central Heating’. All of the words were drawn from extensive workshops with the local community, and she is frustrated that some critics felt the word choices were merely trendy. ‘At Hadrian’s Wall, we engaged with loads of people. If you are inserting a piece of work into a strong community you want them to feel like it belongs to them, and the words came out of workshops where people talked about what the wall means to them, and about gateways and the Romans. Each word has a story. I was amazed when I visited Housesteads Fort as a little girl and saw the Romans had underfloor heating when we didn’t have any central heating at home, just a couple of stoves.
Fuel poverty and having limited money stays with you all your life, and the phrase “Central Heating” was a huge conversation in the workshop group. I’m really pleased with the level of controversy and I’m glad I did the first building on Hadrian’s Wall for 1,600 years. Now, people have spent longer there and have a different view of history, and that’s healthy.’
Myerscough’s A New Now, both on display and being developed in her studio, is designed to elicit communicative joy and to promote imagination. Image Credit: Gareth Gardner
Myerscough is currently working on a bandstand for Weston-Super-Mare as part of a Super Shrines art project to inject vibrancy into the high street. After that, she hopes to persuade an organisation that what they really want is a Chrysanthemum House. ‘I was working in Finsbury Park, where people used to go to take the air in Victorian days, and I saw that there used to be a chrysanthemum house there. It would give winter colour, and people would visit the colourful chrysanthemums and it would make them happier in the winter – that’s how colour uplifts you. I grew lots of chrysanthemums in the garden last year to look at the colours and photograph them, and I keep trying to persuade people to let me make it. If I don’t get any takers, I’m going to start building it in the garden to have my own first!’
