Da Gadderie, Shetland Museum & Archives, Lerwick, until 19 May 2008

From 7 minutes of Explosion. © Jeanette Sendler

OUTSIDE Shetland Museum & Archives in Lerwick, amidst the voices and music that continuously float out of a dockside sound installation, is something new.

There are a group of large rocks that weren’t there before. Across and around the rocks are carefully laid, red textiles. They are like fishing nets that have wrapped themselves around rocks after a storm.

But they are not nets. Look closer and two distinct types of red fibre, a vibrant and an earthy red, become apparent. The pieces are not made from the regular knots and holes of nets, rather these are delicate threads knitted together to form a subtle pattern.

Look through the holes at the rock underneath. You see contrast. Contrast between rock and wool, between hard and soft, between red and rock colour.

This is a taster of the art exhibition currently on show inside the building. It is entitled 7 minutes of Explosion, and is a collaboration between textile artists Barbara Ridland and Jeanette Sendler.

Enter Da Gadderie, the building’s temporary exhibition space, and you enter a room filled with structural and suspended textiles and installations. There are objects, film, sound and photographs. Not a rabble of things but rather a carefully considered placing of made and found objects that seem connected. But how are they connected?

Strict, thematic colour is evident. Grey, cream, black and red dominate. There are large constructions that hang like unrolled tongues from the ceiling and out along the floor. There are bright workman’s clothes, a hard hat or two, some tools, film, voices and photographs from the past.

But there are also elegant little felted hats and suspended garments. Small pieces of rock lovingly placed on pedestals. What connects all these things?

Titles, such as ‘Red Bing’, ‘Red Burn, Quartz’ and ‘Metamorphic’ reveal the theme for this exhibition. This exhibition is about the visual power, natural and social history of Scord Quarry, Scalloway.

In the wool and felting you now see rock strata, rips, explosions and bursts. Nature and industry, peace and explosion are worked by hand and by stitch into the textiles. Landscape, iron ore and quartz have somehow been knitted into installations, hats and jackets.

As the explanatory text tells us, “7 Minutes of Explosion is the period of time from the sounding of the quarry siren to signal that the shot is about to be fired, to the sounding of the “all clear” once it has been decided that the blast has gone well and it is safe to return into the quarry.”
However, this is just one interpretation. The title has many meanings. It can also refer to the two women’s experimental approach to felting and textiles. Ridland is an experienced local textile designer. She is acutely aware of the heritage that she comes from.

It is a long heritage of wool and stitches that she now technically breaks apart and ‘bursts’ in her work. Sendler works independently and in collaboration with Ridland. She merges ideas, often about social history, with creative machine knitting skills.
How did this collaboration start? The title could also refer to the moment that the two women met. Sendler took part in a three month Shetland Arts schools craft residency in 2005. During this time she was keen to meet someone who could teach her to knit.

At the end of her residency she was about to step on the boat to leave when she met Ridland. They had minutes to talk and it was, indeed, a creative explosion. An explosion that now binds together their passions and exploration of artistic techniques.

Ridland and Sendler went on to meet three or four times a year and exchanged skills and project ideas. This exhibition furthers our understanding of what is happening between the two women but also with the third collaborator, the quarry itself.

A film shows images and interviews. It introduces us to the two artists and people who have worked at the quarry. Personal reminiscence and creative process are shown together. Close ups of textures such as rock and tyre tracks, images of explosion and textile pieces laid down in the quarry itself reveal layer upon layer of interpretation.

Photos, gathered by quarry manager Billy Butler, are shown on a small computer screen in the gallery. We see machinery, people and nature inhabiting the quarry. There is also film footage from 1955. We see heavy work but also laughter and solidarity.

Ridland explains the importance of this to her work: “Recognition of the efforts of people like Shetland’s hand knitters and quarry workers. Stone from the quarry is used for roads which provide an essential infrastructure for local communities, and the incredible textile heritage handed down by the island women has made Shetland a knitters’ ‘Mecca’.”

In 2006, supported by Ridland, Sendler took part in two independent exhibitions in the Museum of Arts & Crafts, Itami, Japan & at the Collins Gallery in Glasgow. Pieces from both exhibitions are on show here.

These include the striking installations Moder Dy. Moder Dy is an old Shetland form of navigation that is no longer used. Fishermen found their way home through reading patterns in the waves. Their wives would estimate their husband’s return by the amount of yarn they had knitted.

Now great skeletal forms in greens and browns, inspired by the Moder Dy, hang suspended from the ceiling of Da Gadderie. We see waves and we see patterns. On the wall behind is a piece called ‘Sea Haul’, felted balls of wool are gathered up as if they have been dredged up from the bottom of the sea.

Large wall pieces such as ‘Metamorphic’ are constructed from twisted lines of wool to create delicate structures and bold areas of texture. Such pieces simultaneously convey the immensity of landscape and the minuscule detail of rock. The descriptions of the work are technical but also strangely poetic.

‘Metamorphic’ is “Mixed yarns needle punched onto Shetland and merino fabric”; ‘Red Bing’, “Hand tooled Shetland wool ns Japanese paper yarn needle punched onto Shetland fibre”.

We see the Manager’s Chair. This chair from the quarry office has a strong resonance to quarry workers to whom it is a familiar piece of furniture. It now sits in Da Gadderie with a thick felted textile draped over it. The chair’s own cracked leather surface and burst upholstery is as tactile and curious as the work on show.

Heritage, social history and men and women’s work have been carefully brought together in this exhibition. 7 Minutes of Explosion is about collaboration and connections.

As Ridland explains: “While out walking in Shetland I have always picked up and dragged home found items. Even as a child I felt that Shetland’s environment and what women hand knitted were connected.”

This exhibition continues this tradition but also bursts with new ideas and experimental techniques.

© Karen Emslie, 2008

Links

• Shetland Museum and Archives
• Jeanette Sendler
• Barbara Ridland