Artist talk: Flax by the Sun, Weeds by the Moon
with The White House artist in residence Rachel Pimm, Christine Borland, Rachel Jones & Raisa Kabir
Saturday 20th March, via Zoom
3pm – 4:30pm (to coincide with the Vernal Equinox 2021, 4:16pm)
To attend the event please email: whitehouse@createlondon.org for a zoom link
Join us to mark the culmination of Rachel Pimm’s gardening residency with The White House, coinciding with the Vernal equinox (equi and nox meaning equal and night in Latin); marking the moment when the daylight is equal to the night, and the point from which the days get longer. It is traditionally a time to come together to mark the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, and the start of the new growing season.
We invite you to gather with us (via zoom) for an in-conversation with artists Rachel Pimm, Christine Borland, Rachel Jones and Raisa Kabir, who will share their experiences of growing and harvesting flax at various outdoor sites, including The White House garden in Dagenham.
This event coincides with the launch of Weeds by the Moon, a publication by Rachel Pimm in the form of an almanac and wild foraging guide organised by the passing of lunar time documenting Rachel’s research over 2020.
Lunar time is inherently feminist and anti-capitalist, a refusal of the calendar or of growing for profit, instead celebrating the value of finding things by observing and connecting to ancient and contemporary resources for wild food and medicine.
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Rachel Pimm has been artist in residence with The White House since March 2020, forming a remote gardening residency, in which nothing could be actively planted, only observed.
During this year of isolation, The White House garden has inadvertently been left to re-wild. It is often advised before beginning work in a new garden to spend a year observing what is already there, instead focusing on the potential of weeds growing locally, learning what should be kept and what else to grow.
Through 2020, Rachel has been connecting remotely with the site and its communities through sharing conversations; remote correspondence; documenting foraging, growing and cooking processes; and undertaking research into historical and current records of plants for material, medicinal, herbal and scientific use.
This event marks the culmination of a year of research by Rachel Pimm, with The White House. For more information about Rachel’s residency please click here.
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About Rachel Pimm
Rachel Pimm is a research based artist, working in conversations, text, photography, video and sculpture to explore environments and their materialities, histories and politics often from the view point of the things themselves. They are interested in queer, feminist and post-colonial materialisms, natural histories and resource extraction, and the potential of surfaces and matter to transform. Their recent work has been included in programmes including the Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Science Gallery London, Chisenhale Gallery (all London 2014-2019) as well as internationally across Europe and the USA. Recent residencies include Whitechapel Gallery writer in residence, Loughborough University Chemical Engineering and Gurdon institute of Genetics at Cambridge University.
About Christine Borland
Christine Borland is an artist based in Argyll, Scotland and a Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University. Over the last 30 years she has developed research in negotiation with experts in institutions of science and medicine and in museums, collections and archives to make invisible practices and hidden narratives accessible through her practice. In 2018 Christine worked in the stores and archives of two Scottish collections: Glasgow Museums and Mount Stuart, Bute to investigate institutional care narratives through the intangible heritage of World War 1. These resulted in I Say Nothing, a permanent work for Glasgow Museums at Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and To the Power of Twelve at Mount Stuart. Current research with partners at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh and Deveron Projects, Huntly focuses on engendering intimate connection to heritage, present and future ecology through the growing and hand-working of flax into linen. She will exhibit this new body of work in Climate House gallery at the Botanics in August 2021.
Christine Borland, Sow from the series Dig, Rake, Sow, Riddle, Water, Weed, Pull, 2020-21, Water-colour on hand-made, home-grown linen paper.
About Rachel Jones
Rachel Jones is a designer, gardener and natural dyer. Rachel has spent the last 16 months based at Grymsdyke Farm in the Chilterns researching naturally derived colour. Set in the rural Chilterns, Grymsdyke Farm is a research facility with the aim of exploring the essential connections between processes of design and place making. Rachel’s work presents colour as an essential part of place making, highlighting the benefits of the ability to read colour and see natural dyes as a representation of our environments. Rachel’s research reconnects to knowledge that once would have been understood by everyone, knowledge that once would have been inherent in a location. Rachel’s recent work has been exhibited at Oslo Architecture Triennale, The Barbican Centre and Van Gogh House.
Rachel Jones, image of flax retting.
About Raisa Kabir
Raisa Kabir is an interdisciplinary artist and weaver, who utilises woven text/textiles, sound, video and performance to translate and visualise concepts concerning the cultural politics of cloth, labour and embodied geographies. Kabir addresses cultural anxieties surrounding nationhood, textile identities and the cultivation of borders; as well as examining the encoded violence in histories of labour in globalised neo-colonial textile production. Her (un)weaving performances comment on power, production, disability and the body as a living archive of collective trauma.
Kabir has participated in residencies and exhibited work internationally at The Whitworth, The Tetley, Raven Row, Cove Park, Textile Arts Center NYC, and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design U.S. Kabir has lectured on South Asian textile cultures at Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Art London, London College of Fashion, The Courtauld, Royal College of Art, Manchester School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art.
Raisa Kabir, Untitled I Flax, 2020, Linen, unspun flax, cotton and industrial rope.
Rachel Pimm’s residency was supported by City Bridge Trust and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.