Ania Bas was commissioned to make a site-specific piece of work for Ridley Road Market as part of Stalls & Traders.
She began her commission by undertaking 26 days of structured research on the market with each day being based on a different letter of the alphabet. She collected information and stories, talked to traders and shoppers, took photographs and wrote notes. A list of words associated with each day's conversations and a photograph representing the selected letter were collected together to represent this research process. To view this documentation please see A-Z Market.
A video (below) was also made as another way of collating this information and representing the fantastic Ridley Road.
Information collected included people's personal stories about the area, information on the goods sold in the market, changes that have happened or are happening in Dalston and people's observations of this unique community that is centred around the market.
In the last week of the research stage a pitch was rented and the research was available for people to browse through so the public could see what Ania had been doing during her time on the market.
The project culminated in a series of tours of the market by Ania Bas. These were 15 minute personal guided tours and were undertaken mainly in silence. Ania chose particularly interesting areas of the market to show to people which she 'framed' with her arms, created signs which she held up that had quotes printed on them from her earlier research stage and took people to certain places to 'experience' a certain aspect of the market such as talking to the man in the watch shop/councelling centre, gambling 50p in the fruit machines in the cafe or chopping open your own jelly-nuts for a refreshing drink.
Ania is currently creating a downloadable guide to Ridley Road so those who missed the guided tours can see the sights of the market at their own pace. Details will be posted here when it is completed.
