(Article originally featured in Design Week)
Since setting up Studio Myerscough in 1993, Morag Myerscough has brightened up hospital wards, schools and countless public spaces with her artwork. We speak to the designer about the need for a human touch in social engagement projects, the inspiration of her artistic family, and why a messy desk won’t hinder your career.
By Sarah Dawood February 23, 2015
“I was absolutely useless at playing any instrument my dad tried me out at,” says Morag Myerscough, whose late father was a viola-player and mother is a textiles artist. “I loved making, and I could sew anything – but because my mum did textiles, I didn’t want to do that.”
Pursuing what she describes as “something genetic”, she went on to study graphic design at St Martin’s College, and an MA in the same subject at the Royal College of Art, to the despair of her school head teacher. “She said to me ‘You’ll never make a living’,” Myerscough says. “That’s probably the worst advice I’ve ever had. The most important thing in life is that somebody doesn’t push you into something you don’t want to do.”
She went on to set up Studio Myerscough in 1993, and in 2010, alongside Luke Morgan and the late Gerrard O’Carroll, founded Supergroup – a team of creatives who embark on both individual and group social engagement projects. Myerscough counts her inspirations as Andy Warhol (“I just love Pop Art, which you can probably tell,”) Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, The Bauhaus and Memphis. “I liked the fact that they were architects but also furniture and textiles designers,” she says. “They weren’t defined by a particular discipline – they could do whatever they wanted.”
This outlook is one that Myerscough has carried into her own work – fast-forward a few decades, and she is a nationwide inspirational figure in graphic design, having created more than 30 public art installations and undertaken hundreds of projects over her 27-year career – most of which have allowed her creative license to communicate her own signature, colourful style.
“What’s good is that people know that if they choose me, then they’re going to have to be prepared for what they get,” she says. “I respond to architecture and briefs, my approach develops and changes all the time – but I am going to make an impact on the building.”
The public has seen Myerscough’s “impact” spread across multiple installations, from the Temple of Agape, designed by her and fellow Supergroup member Luke Morgan for the London Southbank’s Festival of Love in 2014, to her controversial neon light project illustrating the letter “c” for a British Library exhibition in 2004 – which read, “Has Anybody Seen Mike Hunt?”
Myerscough’s vibrant, and often brave, style is one that’s synonymous with her personality – from her curious Twitter feed, which consists only of a mysterious combination of colours and numbers, to the hundreds of typically Myerscough rainbow miniature artworks spanning her art studio walls, there’s a feeling of uniqueness and non-conformity to all her work.
“When I was at college, a tutor said to me, ‘You’ll never make a decent designer because you’ve got a messy desk’,” she says. “A few years later, I was doing an exciting project, and I saw him photocopying fruit juice boxes in a photocopier shop. A level of messiness is sort of who I am – you don’t have to conform.”
If there wasn’t evidence enough that Myerscough lives and breathes her work, she explains all this while sat in her high ceilinged art studio, which doubles up as her apartment, working alongside fellow Supergroup member Morgan past office hours, with her dog Lemmy curled at her feet.
But sitting in her art cocoon is not something that she does much of. Aside from competing with her older sister over who can meet their stepometer target of 10,000 steps a day first (which apparently is not as unobtainable as it sounds), the designer is often juggling multiple public art projects, from bridge rejuvenations and Southbank festivals to children’s hospital ward redesigns.
“It’s good for me as a designer,” says Myerscough, speaking on her work with local communities. “It takes me out of the ivory tower place of sitting here in my studio and making whatever I want to. It grounds me back into reality, which I think is really important.”
For full content, see full article via Design Week
Image Creds:
Luke Morgan
Gareth Gardner