LOADING BAYS AT 274 EAST 1ST AVE.

St. George Marsh began just over a year ago in June 2005, without premeditation, and formed from the possibility of creating something out of a commercial space in a quiet residential environment in Vancouver. Its placement in a noncommercial sector was important, with the potential for people to come across it unexpectedly. The proprietors Gareth Moore and Jacob Gleeson were interested in intermingling museological oddities with ingestible goods and art, in the hope of confusing the roles of these objects. The store was in a continuous state of reformation, growth and dispersal, as items were gathered for display, passed on and re-interpreted into other formations and combinations.

The name of St. George Marsh reflects the history of the area, which was at one point a wetland holding a complex network of streams and rivers. People used to paddle through, picking swamp tea for evening ingestion. If you walk south two blocks to the intersection of St. George Street and 30th Avenue, and put your ear to the culvert, you can hear a long-diverted river still churning away.

St. George Marsh contained:

a video rental department/shelf predominantly stocked with VHS tapes.

a candy bar with rock candy imported from Walton–on–the–Naze, England, along with gum that tastes like soap.

a garden centre stocked with clippings of other plants.

a book store and Library with books loaned out and rarely returned.

a grocery department where you could find three kinds of mustard.

a small gallery (Decoy gallery) which held a quiet mandate of showing art made for typically private reasons, not for the pursuance of any critical, financial or institutional acclaim.

Also: Canned Goods, Dry Goods, Books, Videos, Cassette Tapes, Oil Paintings, Plants, Candy, Clocks, Curios, Drawings, Toys, Chairs, Maps, Masks, Antiques, Signs, Display Cabinets, Nails, Candles, Museological Displays, Cash Box (with Float), Grabbers, Mugs, Portable Marsh, Ice Skates, Bags, Helios Planetarium, Suitcases, Receipts, Lamps, Wood Sculptures, Rim Zim, Locks, Tins, Mead, Christmas Decorations, Rope, Toiletries, Organic Lemonade, Historical Cane, Carboy, Wine Skins, Office Supplies, Beacon, Games, Miniature Marsh, Artwork by: Red Roney, Karen Birch, Fisher, Jeff Chutte, and more; Climbing Gear, Tables, Keys, Bayrisch Malz Bonbons, Mini Golf Course, Blinds, Alpine Gear, Musical Instruments, Poetry, Stereo, Lamps, Pelts, Photographs, Broom (with Dustpan), Jaw Breakers, Bandages, Gliders, Lucky Pennies, Sandwich Boards, Wine Press, Piggy Banks, Ledgers, more...

St. George Marsh
QUITTING BUSINESS
EVERYTHING MUST GO AWAY
Gareth Moore and Jacob Gleeson