THE STREAM Sjølingstad, 6 May - 24 September 2014

When I came here the first time, exactly 14 years ago, I was reading Kenzaburō Ōe on the train from Oslo. I don't remember the title of the book, but it was about the inhabitants of a village in a rural area of Japan. It was also about a trickster figure.

In Mandal, I met the production manager of the mill I was about to visit. When we drove on the gravel road in his old Mercedes, along the stream through the valley towards Sjølingstad, it felt like entering the landscape in the book. It felt like entering another time. Walls of trees. Quiet. Hidden.

In May 2000 I was here for three weeks to get an introduction to weaving using the old mechanical industrial looms of Sjølingstad Woollen Mill. I worked on one of the cloth looms, a 1936 model from Sächsische Webstuhlfabrik with a white woollen warp. I made samples using Batavia patterns and several weft yarns, weaving a length of fabric that I took through all the steps in the finishing department.

It happened instantly. I knew I had found a place where I wanted to stay. I felt an immediate and strong connection to the buildings and workshops at Sjølingstad, to the people, the tools, the textiles, the village and the surrounding nature.

Three weeks became two years.

There is one specific memory from that first time I came here that is particularly strong - the view of the stream, and the green hill behind it, just by the bend in the road where the village starts at the Thorsager house. The spring came very early that year. It was warm, humid and intense. The view of the stream merged with the landscape in the Ōe book, and my memory from the moss garden in Kyōto. A dark shiny green.

The silence here is powerful.

I have always wondered how a stream that small could ever have been sufficient to supply the mill with enough power. When I walked along it earlier today it was very quiet - motionless, almost.

The mill is still here.