Trading Cloth critiques the introduction of European cultural practices to Australia that are incongruent to its inherent climactic and landscape conditions. In mid-2023 artist and weaver Blake Griffiths undertook a residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre and undertook extensive collection research throughout Scandinavia investigating oldvaðmál cloth – a specific type of trading cloth with both spiritual and economic currency (often used to pay rent and tax).
Through his research he learnt specific processing techniques of the Icelandic sheep breeds from Icelandic farmers (significantly different from the Merino wool he was used to handling), creating new work in response. The residency also enabled Griffiths the opportunity to delve into the poetic connections between the origins ofvaðmál cloth in Europe and the introduction of the sheep in Australia, his home country, where the hoofed animal has caused irreparable environmental damage. Trading Cloth aims to engage with themes of domestication, transhumance, environmental devastation and repair.
Blake Griffiths, Untitled (to be an island), 2024 (detail), video still. Courtesy of Meryl Prendergast.