About

The Flax Exchange performs ‘Flax Suite’, a set of making actions exploring folk cultures and labour politics of traditional textile production.

The Flax Exchange is an ongoing community project led by artist Shane Waltener. It advocates sustainable textile practices, with a focus on growing flax from seed to process into linen thread and championing ancient craft techniques through the medium of performance. Sustainable textile processes and soil-to-soil systems have been crafted into a series of live ‘making-actions’ by Shane Waltener and members of the exchange, highlighting the repetitive, rhythmic, musical nature of textile-making that keep the maker rooted in the pattern of production.

The Flax Exchange project was initiated in Walton-on-the-Naze by Shane Waltener and The nOse, a project space and bookshop in north-east Essex. It drew inspiration from textile fibersheds, a term coined by sustainability campaigner Rebecca Burgess, describing networks connecting growers, makers and consumers.

‘Flax Suite (The Whitechapel Variation Reprised)’ features a reworking of the original ‘Flax Suite’, devised as part of a year-long residency in 2023–24 at Craft Central and Poplar Union. This iteration is a variation of a score developed during a four-month residency at Park Primary School, Newham, including song, movement and dance, developed by musician Zoë Gilmour and dance artist Laura Glaser in collaboration with 90 Year 3 pupils. The piece is performed at Whitechapel Gallery with accompanying soundscore by Elisha Lewis.

The performance is followed by a discussion with Shane Waltener, members of The Flax Exchange, Kirsty Lowry (Curator: Schools & Teachers, Whitechapel Gallery) and invited guests. Attendees have the opportunity to process flax into linen thread.