RETURN TO RECENT WORKS
FlaX, 2019
Details
Practice-based research structured around the growing and processing of flax at Deveron Projects, Huntly
#lINEATION, 2020
Details
Participatory flax growing and harvesting project with 37 volunteers enlisted through an Instagram call-out. Conducted largely remotely during lockdown.
Photography: Christine Borland, Deveron Projects, #Lineation participants.
FlaX TURNS, 2021-22
Details
In the second part of this longtitudinal project, moving from Flax (2019) to Flax Turns (2021-2022) the artist learnt and disseminated the process of flax spinning, together with textile artists Daisy Williamson and Lynne Hocking
Photography: Christine Borland, Abby Quick
Links
Deveron Projects
Deveron Projects Event
Drop Spinning Workshop - film by Abby Beatrice Quick
FlaX TURNS foundation cloth, 2022
Details
An event structured around a new work The Distaff Dialogues: Christine Borland & Grace Borland Sinclair, performed alongside special guest turns. Sat 24th Sept, 10am - 6pm, OAP Hall
Photography: Christine Borland, Jassy Earl, Ross Sinclair
Links
Weaving; Flax Turns Foundation Cloth - film by Abby Beatrice Quick
DESCRIPTION
FLAX
In 2019, at the invitation of Deveron Projects, Huntly, the artist conducted the research project FLAX; alongside members of the local community she used the growing and processing of flax as a means to recover stories and relationships to the town’s heritage, situated at the heart of Scotland’s thriving linen industry in the late 18th century.
With a team of local growers, Borland sowed commercially available flax seeds in the Brander Garden of Deveron Projects in March 2019. The group met regularly through-out the plant’s 100-day growing period, leading to the pulling of the flax and the harvesting of a substantial amount of seeds for sowing the following year. Over this period Deveron Projects hosted a series of events to share the growing journey, help develop the thinking behind it and interrogate the contemporary implications of knowledge recovered.
This project was supported by RSA RESIDENCIES FOR SCOTLAND 2019.
#LINEATION
#Lineation was a communal act developed in response to the closure of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh in 2020 due to the pandemic. Ahead of her forthcoming exhibition at RBGE, the artist had planned to work with gardeners to sow the flax seeds harvested in Huntly the previous year. Instead, 2020 found us all inhabiting space and time in different ways, and many found themselves gravitating to their gardens and to nature. A team of 37 growers were recruited through an Instagram call out to grow Borland’s flax-seeds in their own gardens, community allotments and co-opted public spaces.
Borland posted out her seed packets just as lock-down began in March 2020 and beds of all shapes but approximately 1m sq in size to sow the 14g of seeds recommended for linen production, slowly sprouted flax around the country. Communicating on social media platforms via the hashtag Lineation, the growers shared the same seasonal rituals, which would have sustained both society and environment before the modern scientific and industrial era displaced the plant-lore of women as healers and makers of cloth.
All the flax grown eventually became part of artworks in Borland’s postponed exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh in 2021.
FLAX TURNS
Resuming second part of her project, postponed in 2020 and moving from Flax (2019) to Flax Turns (2021-2022) Borland learnt the process of flax spinning, together with textile artists Daisy Williamson and Lynne Hocking. Working both in person in Huntly and remotely at home, the three stayed in touch while spinning the flax grown and processed in Huntly by Christine and local participants during 2019. The accumulated thread was ready for weaving in spring 2022.
FLAX TURNS FOUNDATION CLOTH
The production of, and performance with Foundation Cloth (2022), a linen cloth spun by Aberdeenshire weaver, Lynne Hocking, with the fibres from Flax Turns (2021-22), marked the end of Borland's project. This culminated in a celebratory event on the 24th September 2022 at the OAP Hall in Huntly.
The event was structured around a new work The Distaff Dialogues: written and performed by Christine Borland & Grace Borland Sinclair, alongside special guest turns. Invited artists and speakers included: project collaborators Daisy Williamson, Lynne Hocking and Cath Snape; Dr Sally Tuckett (Glasgow University, discussing the Scottish women spinning linen in the 18th century and the enslaved people of the British colonies who wore it); Christiane Seufferlein on the Berta’s Flax Project; Caribbean artist Annalee Davis and Anthropologist Caroline Gatt.
The Distaff Dialogues is realised in a further iteration developed for the British Textile Biennial 2023.
Research/Process - FLAX
Events developed and hosted with Deveron Projects included a Friday Lunch/seed-sowing event, a talk at the spring Plant Party, Storylines; an event in the Bin Forest, a flax rippling (seed removing) event, a breaking, scutching and heckling demonstration at the Xmas 2019 Elves Workshop, a linen heritage walk, demonstrations and talks at the Huntly Hairst, 2021. Guest participants included; Raonaid Mackrory, Ron Brander, Caroline Gatt, Lynne Hocking-Mennie and Faye Hamblett-Jones.
#LINEATION, flax grown in 37 locations, 2020
#Lineation; Community of Growers flax harvest, 2020
The group regularly communicated over WhatsApp and Instagram to share their stories and experiences; discussing everything from their weeds and slug problems, to shared textile family histories. All the flax grown was dried by each participant in sheds, greenhouses, porches and living rooms and sent on to, or collected by Borland as lockdown eased in summer, to become raw material for the Botanics exhibition In Relation to Linum.
FLAX TURNS, 2021-22
In the second part of her project, moving from Flax (2019) to Flax Turns (2021-2022) Christine learnt the process of flax spinning, together with textile artists Daisy Williamson and Lynne Hocking. Working both in person in Huntly and remotely at home, the three stayed in touch while spinning the flax grown and processed in Huntly by Christine and local participants during 2019. Continuing the project’s entanglement with seasonal practices, the spinning took place during the darker days of winter, with the accumulated thread becoming ready for weaving in spring 2022.
FLAX TURNS FOUNDATION CLOTH, SEPT 2022
With Flax Turns Foundation Cloth, Deveron Projects and Christine Borland marked the end of Christine's project Flax (2019-21), Flax Turns (2021-22) and Foundation Cloth (2022), on Saturday 24th September from 10am - 6pm at the OAP Hall in Huntly.
The event was structured around a new work The Distaff Dialogues: Christine Borland & Grace Borland Sinclair, performing alongside special guest turns. Invited artists and speakers included: project collaborators Daisy Williamson, Lynne Hocking and Cath Snape; Dr Sally Tuckett (Glasgow University, discussing the Scottish women spinning linen in the 18th century and the enslaved people of the British colonies who wore it); Christiane Seufferlein on the Berta Flax Project; Annalee Davis; Caroline Gatt.
