Marchnad/Market is a gallery exhibition that represents something akin to an end point for Tŷ Pawb’s (Everybody’s House in English) relationship with Wirral-based artist Alan Dunn. The name of the exhibition relates to how Tŷ Pawb is an amalgamation of an art gallery within an indoor market, transformed from what was previously The People’s Market. The artist was initially commissioned to produce new artwork for the art gallery/market’s mechanical billboards in 2021. Prior to that commission, the billboards – which are titled Wal Pawb (or Everybody’s Wall), had been refreshed with new artwork every year. Dunn’s series of images for the billboards have remained in situ since 2022, owing to his continued presence.
The exhibition consists of a two-channel projection and an accompanying soundtrack, available on 10” vinyl, composed by gallery staff member, Meilir Tomos. Outside the gallery, alongside the aforementioned billboards, a new neon sign for the market, spelling out the exhibition’s bilingual title, is guarded by welcoming gallery invigilators wearing ‘M’-branded aprons as uniforms.
Of the two films being projected, the left-hand channel is a forty-four-minute ode to all who have contributed to Dunn’s project and a celebration of all who make Tŷ Pawb what it is. It features contributions from poet Natasha Borton and traders who have either been filmed by Dunn or who have contributed their own content. Alongside are references to previous moments in the wider engagement work that went into making both the billboards and the exhibition, as well as references to the artist’s life away from Wrexham, at home and in his native Scotland.
Perhaps owing to the length of the film, there are moments where the viewer might question where the artist is taking us. There are some arduous meanders where Dunn has made an admirable attempt to give screen time to all – not just those who contributed to the overarching project, but to everybody who contributes to the day-to-day life of Tŷ Pawb. This is a generous act, of the type of love that is borne out of community.
The film is described by the gallery interpretation as being fast-paced, with the artist employing a rhythm of changing images and vignettes of candid encounters with traders, journeys to and from Wrexham from the artist’s home and lots of close-ups of hands at work.
The right-hand channel features an eight-minute loop of found amateur Super8 footage and old photographs of the People’s Market from before it was redeveloped and rebranded as Tŷ Pawb. The photographs of old stalls from the 1990s, such as the vacuum repair man, are a thirst trap for nostalgia. A cynic might have you think this was a methodology for coaxing old traders on board with the project, but the photographs were in fact provided by traders themselves.
There is humour found in the Super8 footage, alongside the nostalgia. Two men carry a ladder down a street in Buster Keaton slapstick style. There are landmarks which locals may identify even if long since demolished. The Hand Inn’s demolition plays a prominent role in the footage with scant regard for health and safety. It was an establishment that was raised to the ground in 1940, along with the old Town Hall, as part of a road widening scheme to ease traffic congestion in the town. Today, ironically, that area is semi-pedestrianised.It is possible this particular piece of footage was chosen purely on aesthetics; the pub’s name making reference back to the close-up shots of hands to the left. The pub is gone, but other recognisable buildings from the film remain and offer a tangible connection to the present. The Grade II listed 19th Century Butcher’s Market has recently undergone refurbishment along with its counterpart, the General Market, and reopened in November 2024.
Meilir Tomos’ soundtrack is haunting – his use of synthesizers, blended with ambient sounds of Tŷ Pawb, are emotive. It is tracked to sync with the left-hand projection, meaning it does not always correlate with the imagery when watching the right hand projection. However, every so often there is a coincidental alignment that is genuinely breathtaking in the way that chance encounters often are. The soundtrack’s pacing is also soft and feels like it has a smear of vaseline across it, as if it were a lens to look back and through at these past times captured by a ghostly camera operator.
If we turn our heads back to the left, it is not all fast-paced. There are moments of prolonged, locked off shots. Hands feature again, with origami and woodwork being demonstrated at close quarters. Then, there is something unexpected and refreshing: abstraction. Disorientating, optical illusions confront us, akin to the paintings of Op-artist Richard Allen, providing a reset and cleansing of the palate. We are being treated to mesmerising sequences that are the result of a collaboration between the artist and the traders of the carpet and blind stalls. Dunn is seeking to uncover the creative and the fun, in what can be a very unforgiving existence as a market trader. The artist evidently has the ability to establish relationships which he can mine to extract valuable nuggets of truth. He then uses these nuggets as building blocks to assemble his narrative.
Not all of the nuggets he extracts act in the same way. We see that some of the traders recognised an opportunity for their contribution to the film to secure publicity for their wares by providing content taken from their online presence to feature in the film. The use of TikTok fodder and a scroll through a Facebook page might seem effortless, but in the context of the film their use provides another pace change and a mood shift. With the artist’s decision to layer stock footage over the top, he introduces uneasy and ominous advertising motifs and the style that might be found in a Blade Runner cityscape.
TikTok filters are also utilised through the film. The use of artificially generated images is a reflection of contemporary shopping habits – online shopping, home delivery, limited human interaction. Artificial Intelligence has the ability to influence what we buy, when and how we should buy it. Independent market traders face deciding whether to embrace this change or fight it. All the food court traders at Tŷ Pawb trade via well-known delivery services as well as direct and in-person trading.
Dunn’s has been a four-year journey where he has found himself positioned at the centre of what has been a turbulent time for independent traders, especially in Wales. Intentionally or not, the artist has documented this period through his various projects with Tŷ Pawb, starting with the billboards through to this exhibition and incorporating a traders’ Christmas advert and further outreach work in collaboration with local curatorial duo Chloe Goodwin and Ryan Saunders of Dispensary Gallery.
By chance, the Marchnad/Market exhibition coincides with Welsh Government’s announcement of a cap on business rates increase. The Senedd plans to utilise new powers that allows business rates relief to be tailored to specific business sectors. This is welcome news for independent businesses in Wales who are still emerging from pandemic obscurity following the lockdown measures taken during the global Covid-19 outbreak.
Traders coming and going, both in the film and in the market (some traders who feature are no longer trading or have moved elsewhere) reflect post-Covid revival. Some traders started small with pop-up stalls or were starting new business ventures during and/or following Covid, and have found the need to expand and locate their businesses in other areas of Wrexham. Other traders have struggled to stay afloat as a result of Covid and have subsequently ceased trading. This film indirectly captures all of this. By attempting to platform and champion independent traders, Dunn has also highlighted their subsequent absence from the market(s). Meilir’s haunting soundtrack reprises.
A vast majority of the content used for the film is recorded using smartphones. The unsteady, hand-held footage, the struggle of aspect ratio changes and harsh lighting all contribute to a genuinely warm informality. Everything feels familiar. Markets are familiar, they are familial. The camera shakes and cuts back to a steady, static shot of hands. The heavy nostalgia loops and continues.
What makes indoor markets valuable is that they can retain a degree of nostalgia. The traders might be selling items that you can easily obtain elsewhere and they might not be selling at the lowest price. What the traders are providing, and what Alan Dunn has captured, is human interaction. A smile, a laugh and a joke. A handshake.
James Harper is a curator and writer based in Liverpool.
Marchnad/Market, is on at Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham, 21 Feb 2025 – 26 April 2025
This review is supported by Tŷ Pawb.
Published 24.04.2025 by Natalie Hughes in Reviews
1,505 words