Teän Roberts (Hold Fast) - Flood Tide, 2022

FLOOD TIDE, 2022

Digital giclée photographic print on 310gsm cotton rag archival paper

For all the accounts of the “back-breaking” nature of kelp collecting, Reverend George Woodley, writing in 1822, complained that it was difficult to find household servants on the Isles of Scilly because “the women preferred kelping or knitting.” It’s impossible to know for certain why this was, but we can imagine that - for women at least - the autonomy and community offered by kelping (which was undertaken by whole families over the summer months) was preferable to more gendered, prescriptive, servile employment inside the houses of rich mainland folk. Perhaps they valued the hard work of seaweed and freedom over the drudgery of service industry work.

20x30 inches. Edition of five. £250