Please join the Friends of the ATW for a series of special lectures ahead of the ATW’s prestigious small tapestry prize, the 2021 Kate Derum Award and Irene Davies Emerging Artist Award for Small Tapestries.

Speaker: Caron Penney & Katharine Swailes, Atelier Weftfaced (UK)
Tuesday 20 April 6pm AEST*

WATCH THE LECTURE

Celebrating 10 years since the Kate Derum Award was established the tapestry weavers selected for this speaker series will have been winners or finalists of either the Kate Derum Award or Irene Davies Emerging Artist Award for Small Tapestries. This series of lectures celebrates the diversity and scope of contemporary tapestry practice worldwide in anticipation of the awards. 

Caron Penney & Katharine Swailes are tapestry weavers who have been selected as finalists in the Kate Derum Award in 2017 and 2019. In 2013 Caron Penney established Atelier Weftfaced, a small atelier in the heart of Sussex keeping the craft of hand woven tapestry and hand crafted costume thriving. Together with Master Weaver and Costumier Katharine Swailes, the Weftfaced weavers have a background in contemporary and traditional textiles, while sharing a special interest in the fine arts.

Caron Penney is a master tapestry weaver, she studied at Middlesex University and has worked in textile production for over twenty years. She is both an artisanal weaver and an artist and has manufactured the work of artists from Tracey Emin to Martin Creed. In her tapestries Penney uses both references to street architecture, and structural comparisons between the warp and weft and the gridded road systems in New York and respond to the ebb and flow of the daily migration across the city.

Construction and materials are central to Katharine Swailes wall based and sculptural handwoven tapestries. She investigates the conceptual underpinning of the weaving process using a looping sequence and a cross sequence of embellishments with a minimal palette. In 2019 Swailes showed her series ‘The Constellations’ at Collect and was shortlisted for the Cordis prize for her work ‘Le Bric et de Broc’, shown at London Art fair in January 2020.

Attendees can watch the lecture live via Zoom. Please register to receive a link to attend. *AEST is Australian Eastern Standard Time. You can check your timezone here. The talk will be recorded and available on You Tube at a later date.