Taxcloth: the Toevakoddi Project
Saturday, March 18th 2023 - Sunday, May 7th 2023
Da Gadderie, Shetland Museum & Archives
The Toevakoddi Project is a collaboration by three Shetland artists - Hazel Hughson, Barbara Ridland and Joan Fraser.
The project commemorates all Shetlanders’ payment of rent and tax in wadmal, a wool cloth woven at home and fulled (stabilised and lightly milled) in the sea. Toevakoddi is a rocky cleft with suitable wave action where the fulling was traditionally done.
This exhibition will be an art installation of the artists' work at the toevakoddi and their exploration of Shetland cloth as currency. It aims to bring into the gallery the atmosphere and essential function of the toevakoddi at the fulling time when natural energy transforms volumes of cloth. It also reflects on the domestic and communal experience of processing regular quantities of cloth as currency, the continual tensions between demand and delivery, and the precariousness of home and livelihood. Many exhibition visitors would not be here if their ancestors had not produced this woven currency, wadmal.
The exhibition employs a range of media including video shot in and around the water, the use of the woven cloth itself, photographic installation, poetry and drawing.
To find out more about the project visit the Tax Cloth website.
The project is sponsored by Jamiesons of Shetland, Jamieson & Smith, Laurence Odie Knitwear and Ocean Kinetics.