Foundation Cloth

Christine Borland, Foundation Cloth, 2022, Homegrown/handspun/handwoven linen cloth 

Foundation Cloth is the first in Christine’s on-going series of clothes produced over the last 4 years in a collaboration between the artist and a number of individuals and communities, extrapolating the stories behind the processing of different textiles and their journeys through history. The warp (the vertical threads which holds the tension when weaving) of each cloth is made from linen, spun from the European flax, Linum usitatissimum. The scale of each corresponds to its’ potential to cloak the artist’s body. The ‘foundational’ nature of this first cloth makes several references; to linen as the first textile, dated back to 36,000 years BCE, when twisted and dyed fibres were discovered in a cave in Caucasia. It also recognises linen as the foundation of many generations of her families’ livelihood - as handloom weavers then factory workers in Ayrshire. This area of central Scotland was settled by Protestant refugees from Flanders who introduced legendary weaving skills which, by the end of the nineteenth century led to her hometown of Darvel being known as ‘The Lace Town’. 

The long process of producing Foundation Cloth began in 2019. At the invitation of Deveron Projects, Huntly, Scotland, the artist, alongside members of the local community 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 flax seeds in the garden of Deveron Projects in early spring. The group met regularly through-out the plant’s 100-day growing period, leading to the pulling of the flax towards the end of summer and the saving of a substantial number of seeds for future sowing. 

Over the next three years leading up to the weaving of Foundation Cloth, the artist developed the means to consider personal, political, historical and contemporary knowledge recovery in a participatory manner, through a series of performative events and collaborative learning experiences. In common with methods used by Cat and Christine throughout Approaching Home, the artist’s methods are autotheoretical; joining critical ways of thinking about our social structures, and systems of power with autobiographical, lived experiences, materials and processes which can incorporate the wisdom of friends and project participants as thinking companions.

The anthropologist Tim Ingold describes the generation of knowledge through communal making rituals as; a process of growth which yields not a proliferation of ends, but perpetual beginnings. Participants in the projects behind the production of Christine’s on-going series of cloths are a part of the life story of the fibres worked with; from seeds, to plants, into thread and cloth. The contemporary production of textiles which most often includes the exploitation of resources and people on an industrial, global scale, is most often presented to consumers as devoid of process or provenance. The artist’s asks; when technological upheaval has disrupted our intimate relationship to land, materials and husbandry; can connections be re-established through developing the communal, embodied practices behind the production of (Foundation) Cloth?