Renowned artists Maree Clarke (Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Mutti Mutti/Boonwurrung) and Mitch Mahoney (Boonwurrung/Barkindji) will collaborate on the design for the monumental tapestry 'Welcome to Country - now you see me: seeing the invisible', incorporating microscopic images of river reeds from the Maribyrnong River and skeletal drawings of local native flora and fauna.

Working closely with master weavers from the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Clarke and Mahoney’s artwork will be transformed into a three-dimensional tapestry spanning 4.2 x 10 metres, making it one of the largest tapestries ever produced for a public hospital in Victoria.

'Welcome to Country – now you see me: seeing the invisible' will be woven by a team of weavers including Chris Cochius, Amy Cornall, Leonie Bessant, Saffron Gordon, Tim Gresham, Pamela Joyce, David Pearce and Emma Sulzer over 12 months.

Plenary Health New Footscray Hospital Project Chair, Kelvyn Lavelle, said “Mitch and Maree will design a tapestry that will greet the public and staff with a striking visual connection to the local landscape.”

“The integration of art into the hospital's design serves not only to complement the architectural aspects but also to foster calmness and cultural safety in a hospital environment that can often be stressful for patients and family.”

The tapestry is a collaboration between Plenary Health, the official arts partner for the new hospital, Footscray Community Arts, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, and the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, in collaboration with the Victorian Health Building Authority and Western Health.

Footscray Community Arts Artistic Director, Daniel Santangeli said, “Art at the new Footscray Hospital will reflect Footscray’s rich history and strong sense of community.

“As Footscray Community Arts celebrates 50 years of creativity in Melbourne’s west in 2024, we’re proud to be working on this significant tapestry with two renowned artists who have a strong history of practicing in the area.”

Public art is a core part of the new Footscray Hospital’s overall design approach to help deliver an improvement in health and wellness and include various standalone works and immersive art forms in external and internal spaces of the hospital.

Director/CEO of the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Sophie Travers said, “This is a wonderful opportunity for the weavers of the tapestry workshop to collaborate with leading artists and communities in Melbourne’s west.

“The tapestries we have woven for hospitals are amongst our most loved, because of the colour, warmth, and connection they bring to people of all backgrounds. We are confident this will be a joyful and much-loved addition to a beautiful new building.”

The new Footscray Hospital tapestry is generously supported through the Tapestry Foundation of Australia and State Government of Victoria as part of The Premier’s Suite partnership to fund tapestries in new Victorian hospitals.

Construction is well underway on the $1.5 billion new Footscray Hospital that is set to open in 2025.

The new Footscray Hospital tapestry is the second major tapestry that forms The Premiers Suite, a partnership between the Tapestry Foundation of Australia the State Government of Victoria and the Australian Hotels Association to fund the production of major tapestries in new hospitals in the State. The first of The Premier Suite collaboration is The Declaration of the Rights of the Child designed by Emily Floyd and woven by the Australian Tapestry Workshop on display in the Foyer of the Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

The tapestry will take a team of 10 weavers around 12 months to create. The weaving team will draw from the ATW’s extensive palette of over 360 coloured yarns sourced from Victorian farms and dyed on site in South Melbourne.

Since 2015, the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects (TDPA) has fostered exciting new creative dialogues between architects and tapestry weavers.

In 2023, architects were challenged to design a site specific tapestry for Kerstin Thompson Architect’s Bundanon Art Museum.

Showcasing the resulting ten finalists' designs, sections of these were woven as large format studies by weavers from the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW). Leonie Bessant, Chris Cochius, Amy Cornall, Saffron Gordon, Tim Gresham, Pamela Joyce, David Pearce, Emma Sulzer and Caroline Tully all responded individually to a section of each design that inspired or intrigued them. These sections act as propositions - providing a glimpse into their potential as fully realised tapestries.

We were thrilled to work with artists Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings on ‘Old Media,’ a magnificent large-scale tapestry commissioned for a private collection in the United Kingdom. ⁠

Biggs and Collings' responded to a colour palette specified by Paris architect Luis Laplace.

“Colour is important to us. We tried to choose colour that seemed translucent – an illusion of dancing light – a bit like celluloid colour to remind you of the flickering colour you see on film. The apparent transparency of the motifs (the main shapes) is offset by opaque field colours: the blues and greys. It aims to feel uplifting, a bit like a sunset, or a dawn."

"Our paintings usually have a triangle and half-triangle motif, we use it as a vehicle for a rigorously non-figurative experiment with colour and tone. It doesn’t carry meaning. It is just a shape. We felt compelled to change it here because of the place the tapestry is going to be in. The half circles we’ve used, relate to our usual half triangles, but in a vague sort of way they are also connected, in our minds, to the auditorium context. They’re semi-CD. Semi planet. Half-moons. Semi reels of film. Semi spools.” – Emma Biggs & Matthew Collings

Biggs & Collings begun their collaborative practice in 2001 and are internationally renowned for their works in mosaic and abstract, oil-on-canvas paintings informed by art of the past. While they believe art as it used to be understood has come to an end, old ideas and habits remain and inevitably influence the artists of today. The issue of how the past is present in what we, as a society, see and do, and the way in which it may differ from what we believe we say and do, is at the heart of Biggs’ and Collings’ work.

Led by Tim Gresham our eleven weavers translated this design into tapestry, completed in July 2023.

Tim said “Emma and Matthew gave us such a beautiful design to work with. Our focus is on the luminous and translucent quality of the colours. The intense colours and blends where the brush strokes meet are played up in the tapestry, which is scaled up 20 times in size from the design. This increase in size allows for a great deal of creative input from the weaving team, and they are doing an amazing job.”

Spanning two looms the exceptionally large 'Parramatta' tapestry designed by Chris Kenyon has been commissioned as one of many new public artworks destined for the entrances of the new Parramatta Square building in Greater Western Sydney, built by Walker Corporation.

Kenyon is a New South Wales-based, impressionist landscape artist. He uses various painting media to depict nature and landscapes and extracts and dissects strong linear forms. Kenyon is also creating a sculpture of the 'Rose Hill Packet' for the main entrance in Parramatta Square. The 'Rose Hill Packet' was the first ship built by Europeans, designed to carry provisions up the Parramatta River from the fledging settlement of Sydney Cove. In creating his tapestry design, which will welcome visitors to the eastern entrance of the building, Kenyon painted what he imagined to be the viewpoint from the water — as if aboard the vessel — to the river shoreline.

Kenyon researched written descriptions of the region and the earliest sketches and watercolour paintings, done by various artists at the time, including George Raper. Raper, an officer on the first fleet, was an enthusiastic watercolourist, producing around 400 sketches and watercolours of the area. Kenyon writes: The realisation that this was a rich, luxuriantly wooded area made me determined to represent this lushness. I wished to create an atmosphere of golden freshness, with a luminous light reflecting the pure quality of the water, with the Blue Mountains in the background. The level, relatively flat landscape allowed light to penetrate, and so, this feeling of openness was also something I intended to capture.

Kenyon wanted to depict the mystery of the Blue Mountains and the possibility they held to early colonists as a subtle backdrop to the main elements of the landscape. The colonists would have seen the Blue Mountains as a barrier, although the Burramattagal people, the traditional owners of this Country, had traversed them for millennia.

'Parramatta' is the second-largest tapestry woven at the ATW after the Parliament House tapestry designed by Arthur Boyd AC OBE. The tapestry was constructed in two parts as its width is wider than the ATW’s broadest loom. One section is 6.3m wide using 1260 warp threads, and the other is 5.2m using 1040 warp threads. The two parts were joined during installation in Parramatta Square. Due to the four-metre viewing distance the tapestry is woven with a very course warp setting, using two warps per cm and 12 threads on the bobbin. Kenyon’s tapestry design was scaled up ten times, resulting in a 1cm area on the painting becoming a 10cm area on the tapestry. This level of upscaling results in a high level of abstraction of the design, with the capacity for creative interpretation.

Led by Chris Cochius and Pamela Joyce, a thirteen-person weaving team worked collaboratively on this project, with Cochius and Joyce maintaining consistency across the two looms, creating, as they gradually proceed, the strong shapes and high contrast of the landscape. Kenyon encouraged the weaving team to employ their expert knowledge and skills to realise his painting in tapestry form. He was keen for the black lines around the boulders and trees to soften, and the colours warmed up — and he and the weavers discussed creating a sense of depth between the foreground and mountains by making the tones graduate from light at the bottom to dark towards the top of the tapestry.

Commenced in May 2021, the tapestry took 18 months to complete and weighs over 200kgs.

During the long 2020 lock-down ATW weavers Sue Batten, Pamela Joyce, Tim Gresham and Chris Cochius continued to weave from their homes, gradually creating a suite of twelve small tapestries based on pastel works on paper by Arts Projects Australia artist Julian Martin.

This suite of twelve small tapestries are unique, as the weavers created jewel-like miniatures significantly smaller in scale than Martin's original artworks. This process was an inversion of the standard process of design interpretation, and required a very fine warp sett (threads per cm) to render the subtle shifts in colour and chalky surface of the original pastel artworks. These small but impactful tapestries are bold visual statements, each characterised by their unique interpretation of the rich pastel colour and surface qualities of the originals.

Martin, a studio artist at Arts Project Australia (APA), works from photographs and still-life to create abstract compositions as a continuous reinterpretation and response to form. Martin has worked at APA since 1988 and and has held multiple solo shows - most recently in 'Nicolas Party: Pastel' at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York. He has shown in group exhibitions nationally and internationally andhas work in significant collections including Museum of Everything in London, City of Melbourne, Monash University Museum of Art and National Gallery of Victoria (gifted by Stuart Purves), as well as private collections worldwide. He is represented by Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia and Arts Project Australia, Melbourne.

These tapestries were created as part of the 'Weaving Futures' project and represent a significant expansion of the longstanding partnership between ATW and APA to provide meaningful creative and professional development opportunities for artists living with disability.

These tapestries are for sale through the ATW. For sale enquiries: contact@austapestry.com.au +61 3 9699 7885

In May 2020, Weaving Futures gave 15 contemporary artists from around Australia the unique opportunity to develop concepts for contemporary tapestry, nurturing their professional development and creativity during an extraordinarily challenging time. Through re-imagining our usual commissioning process, an inspiring portfolio of ‘loom ready’ tapestry designs emerged — opening up the possibility for these artists to work with the ATW in the future.

In 2021, support for Weaving Futures from Creative Victoria and the Playking Foundation brought tapestry designs by artists Atong Atem, Troy Emery, Eugenia Lim and Hayley Millar Baker onto our looms. ATW weavers Pamela Joyce, Emma Sulzer, Tim Gresham, and Amy Cornall collaborated with these artists, working at the forefront of Australian contemporary art practice.

Atong Atem is an Ethiopian born, South Sudanese Melbourne-based artist interested in portraiture, which she explores through photography and film. Driven by a socially and politically astute reclamation of the ethnographic imagery of the past, Atem uses this framework to examine migrant narratives, postcolonial practices in the African diaspora and identity.

For the 'Self Portrait in July (4)' tapestry design, Atem combined sci-fi theatrical make-up with references to historical painting to take her work in a fantastical direction. In constructing her photograph, Atem focused on how various fabrics, including sheer polyester, woven cotton gingham and knitted wool would respond to light, and how her digital image would be translated back into textile, in this case, tapestry form.

Speaking about her creative partnership with ATW weaver Pamela Joyce, Atem said that ‘it has been incredible to think about how my work can transform in a new medium. Collaborating with Pamela in her weaving process and having the opportunity to have deep conversations about our practices and our approaches to art-making made me feel valued in this process’.

Joyce used a #18 warp at three warps per cm with six strands of wool, cotton or a mix of each per bobbin, successfully harnessing the contrasting properties of wool and cotton to weave a tapestry interpretation of Atem’s riot of pattern and colour. She specifically used the luminescence of cotton to achieve the pearls’ lustre and the headscarf’s sheen. In capturing the bold make-up pigment of the face and bringing a sense of three- dimensionality to the portrait, Joyce wove mostly in wool for its matte characteristics and intensity of colour.

'Self Portrait in July (4)' is generously supported by the Playking Foundation and Creative Victoria.

In September 2020 the ATW embarked on a notable collaboration to create a tapestry for the JamFactory’s annual ICON exhibition, which in 2021 celebrated the life and work of Luritja, Pintupi and Pitjantjatjara artist Kunmanara Carroll (1950–2021).

Carroll is the first Aboriginal artist to be featured in the ICON series, which celebrates the achievements of South Australia’s most influential visual artists working in craft- based mediums. Working from Ernabella Arts at Pukatja in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands, Carroll began painting in 2009, and in 2011 was introduced to ceramics. This exhibition 'Kunmanara Carroll: Ngaylu nyanganyi ngura winki (I can see all those places)' showcases a significant new body of Carroll’s ceramic works, paintings and his first tapestry collaboration, 'Ilpili'.

Committed to passing on cultural knowledge, Carroll’s paternal homeland has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration within his oeuvre. Subjects the artist frequently returned to included Walungurru, the sand-dunes and Ilpili, the rocky lands of his Father’s Country near Kintore — on the way to Mount Leibig and Papunya. The Ilpili tapestry is part of the Seven Sisters story: a minyma kutjara (two women) story where the women are sitting at a rock-hole telling stories, while a wati (man) sits down behind a puli (boulder), watching them. Carroll visited Ilpili and the rock-hole on a journey back to this Country in 2017.

Video calls between Carroll and the weavers, Pamela Joyce, Chris Cochius, Cheryl Thornton and Sue Batten, allowed for a process of interpretation and collaboration, as COVID-19 restrictions had prevented interstate travel. A painting sample (sent to the ATW by Carroll) assisted the weavers in determining the subtle palette. The Ilpili tapestry displays the weaver’s sophisticated understanding of the muted colours and gradual tones that reverberate through the artist’s rapid mark-making and meandering line as translated into woven form.

On 26 April 2021, the tapestry was cut from the loom by family members Alison Milyika Carroll and Roxanne Carroll and JamFactory Curatorial Director Margaret Hancock Davis. Kunmanara Carroll: 'Ngaylu nyanganyi ngura winki (I can see all those places)' was on show at JamFactory from 7 August to 26 September 2021 and will tour nationally until 2023.

Ilpili is proudly supported by Ernabella Arts, JamFactory, IVAIS and the Australia Council for the Arts.

In February 2021, the ATW completed weaving on 'The Royal Harvest' tapestry, designed by Kaantju/Umpila artist Naomi Hobson, for the Australian Embassy to Indonesia, Jakarta. 'The Royal Harvest' is the tenth tapestry woven for the Embassy Tapestry Collection. This innovative cultural program places ATW tapestries, designed by Australian Indigenous artists, on loan to overseas diplomatic posts.

Hobson is well known for her vibrant abstract compositions that are inspired by her culture and the vast traditional lands of her ancestors, that surround her hometown of Coen, in Far North Queensland. Hobson's more recent paintings have drawn on the richness of cultural diversity, experienced while exploring village life, rural farmlands and the urban organised chaos throughout South East Asia. Through a colourful multitude of layered forms and patterns, 'The Royal Harvest' tapestry evokes an environment brimming with life. Hobson says her tapestry design ‘represents the bounty left behind from our ancient trades between my people in Cape York and Indonesians. The shapes suggest trading movement through country and the colours are capturing the energy, joy, abundance and excitement of trading between the two cultures’.

ATW weavers Pamela Joyce, Sue Batten, Tim Gresham and Jennifer Sharpe have delighted in weaving 'The Royal Harvest' – achieving a robust interpretation of Hobson's bold and expressive design. The weavers have mixed a wide range of hues and tones to render Hobson's palette, which encompasses both pastel and bright colours, overlapped with contrasting outlines in dark and light tones. In tapestry form, the weavers maintained the structural lines of the design by deftly harnessing and controlling the edges of each shape. Woven on a 24 warp at 2.5 warps per cm, with nine strands of yarn per bobbin, the tapestries' wefts are predominately wool, with small amounts of cotton used in lighter areas to achieve contrast and clarity.

The ATW was thrilled to welcome Hobson to our South Melbourne workshop in February 2020 to discuss her tapestry design with the ATW weavers and to see the progress that had been made on the loom.

Originally 'The Royal Harvest' was to be unveiled in Jakarta in July 2020; unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this plan. Due to physical distancing measures, production on this tapestry was slowed significantly. However, the continued weaving of this joyous tapestry has been a positive tonic for the challenges met by the ATW in 2020.

'The Royal Harvest' tapestry is generously funded by the Myer Family in memory of Arnold Hancock OBE. A significant figure in the ATW's history, Hancock served on the Board of Directors from 1987–2001, including holding the role of Chairman from 1989–1993. In 1995, he was integral in establishing the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, appointed its founding Chairman, continuing as a Trustee from 2003–2007, and Emeritus Trustee until 2018. In 2004, together with Gordon Darling AC, Hancock initiated the Embassy Tapestry Collection, raising funds for the ATW to weave 'Lumpu Lumpu Country' designed by Daisy Andrews, which currently hangs in the Australian Embassy to Japan, in Tokyo. 'The Royal Harvest' is a fitting tribute to Hancock's visionary thinking, passionate advocacy and unstinting commitment to Australian tapestry for decades.

An image of prominent businessman and philanthropist John B Reid AO was captured in a beautiful tapestry portrait woven by Pamela Joyce at the ATW and completed in 2020.

Mr Reid has had a long and distinguished career in the world of business, through his association with one of Australia’s largest corporations, James Hardie Industries. He was Chairman of UAC Berhad from 1964-1980, Chairman of PT James Hardie Indonesia 1973-1985 and Chairman of the Hardie Trading Limited 1974-1985. He has been a Director of the Company since 1964 and was Deputy Chairman from 1969-1972 and made Chairman in 1973. The position he held was one of great responsibility, which he carried out with diligence and enthusiasm.

He was appointed Member of the Australian Advisory Board for Kmart Corporation in the USA in 1992 and made substitute Director of Coles Myer Ltd in March 1992. Mr. Reid was the Chair of the Australian Bicentennial Authority, and from 1986–1989 he was Director of the World Expo 88 in Brisbane, Queensland. Mr Reid became a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and received the John Storey Medal in 1986 for services to management. His outstanding contribution to industry was recognised in 1980 when Reid was made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia.

This portrait was woven with a minimal palette, with a highly contrasting range of tones to increase the dimensionality of Reid’s features. Woven from a photograph, the tapestry interpretation aimed to highlight natural skin tones and contrast these tones with a dark graduated background and suit jacket. This portrait was commissioned in December 2019 by his wife Lynn Rainbow-Reid AM in celebration of his 90th birthday. This portrait serves as an ongoing celebration of the life of John B Reid AO and recognition of his illustrious achievements.

In 2019 ATW weaver Pamela Joyce wove a portrait of one of Melbourne's foremost trail-blazing women of law, The Hon Margaret Lusink AM.

This family-focused commission is an interpretation of a photographic portrait that carries great personal significance. Joyce used a minimal palette, blending both warm and cool greys for Lusink’s portrait.

Admitted to the Bar in 1965, Lusink is an eminent figure in Australian law. In 1976 she was the first Victorian woman to be appointed to a superior court of record when she was made a judge of the Family Court. On retirement from the Family Court in 1990, Lusink became one of the foundation Professors in the Law Faculty at Bond University. In 1996, she accepted another judicial appointment, becoming the President of the Commonwealth Professional Services Review Tribunal. In the same year, she was appointed AM for law for services to the Family Court and the community.

'The Honourable Margaret Lusink AM' is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.

ATW was delighted to work with Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) and artist Luke Sciberras in 2019 on a new tapestry commission titled, 'Bridle Track, Hill End'. The commission was jointly funded by BRAG and the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Society (BRAGS) to celebrate 50 years of fundraising.

Luke Sciberras is an artist with a deep connection to the Bathurst region. He resides in Hill End, New South Wales — a region he considers as a significant site in Australian modern art. The historic former gold-mining village has a long association with many noted Australian artists including Russell Drysdale, Margaret Olley, John Olsen AO OBE and Brett Whiteley, and boasts the Hill End Artists in Residence Program, overseen by BRAG. The subject of 'Bridle Track, Hill End' is based on the artist’s local surroundings, and reveals a deep connection to landscape and place. It has been used perennially by Sciberras as a source of many paintings, and also hosted many memorable expectations with fellow artists such as Elisabeth Cummings, Anna Zahalka, Tamara Dean, Ben Quilty and Guy Maestri.

The tapestry is based on a watercolour that Sciberras gifted to his former neighbour as a departing gift. The artist’s studio is housed in a former Methodist Church built in 1870, next door to the residence of community nurse Jim Schumacher. Sciberras developed a friendship with Jim, who also provided support for the artist when he developed myocarditis. Sciberras painted the work as a gift to Schumacher and gesture of farewell; the work symbolises both a friendship and a sense of place.

“For more than twenty years I have travelled up and down the famous and precarious Bridle Track from Hill End. It is a vast and wild landscape stretching between Hill End and Bathurst which can only be traversed by four-wheel drive as the very old hand built road has many twists and ruts, but that in itself is part of its appeal. In this enormous no-mans-land of common, crown lands and abandoned farms, the Macquarie and Turon rivers meet, and the road rises and falls from the crossings and causeways as dramatically as a roller coaster.”- Luke Sciberras.

Described as a bon vivant, networker, curator and painter’s painter, Sciberras graduated from Sydney’s National Art School in 1997. He was a studio assistant for several prominent Australian artists who became his mentors, including Martin Sharp, Elizabeth Cummings, John Olsen, John Firth-Smith and Gary Shead. Sciberras has had numerous solo exhibitions over that past three decades. His work has featured in exhibitions at Manly Regional Art Gallery Museum (with Euan Macleod 2018), Glass House, Port Macquarie (2015), and BRAG (2013, 2009). His work is in private and public collections, including regional galleries in Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Bathurst, Orange and Penrith, the Balnaves Foundation, Artbank, and Parliament House, Canberra. Sciberras is represented by King Street Gallery on William, Sydney and Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne.

In 2019 Brook Andrew (Wiradjuri) collaborated with the ATW to create a special edition of tapestries titled, 'Miili', inspired by a detail from his 'Catching Breath' tapestry, which he designed for the ATW in 2014.

Brook Andrew is an interdisciplinary artist. Through interventions and curatorial projects, he aims to make forgotten stories visible and offer alternative interpretations of history.

'Catching Breath' sits within Andrew’s broader body of work that engages with archival portraits of people from around the world. The veil of time that he captures, hides the subjects' identities and raises questions regarding memory. The conceptual and visual potency of Andrew's work links local and international histories. ATW weavers Chris Cochius, Karlie Hawking and Pamela Joyce eagerly revisited ‘Catching Breath’ through the weaving of ‘Miili’, an edition of 10 small tapestries and two artist proofs, focusing on the subject’s piercing gaze from 'Catching Breath'.

‘Catching Breath’ is on loan to the Australian High Commission, Singapore as part of the Embassy Tapestry Collection — which places tapestries designed by Indigenous artists in Australian diplomatic posts. In ‘Catching Breath’ the subject peers through a veil, their eyes focused beyond the fabric — catching our attention, our breath; as though we can decide whether or not to lift the veil, to reveal the unknown.

These striking tapestries highlight the vital role weaver interpretation plays within the creation of contemporary tapestry and how decisions made on the loom can subtly shift the image. A once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire a Brook Andrew tapestry – the 'Miiili' Edition is available for purchase through the ATW.

For sale enquiries: contact@austapestry.com.au +61 3 9699 7885

ATW was thrilled to work on a special tapestry portrait of esteemed Melbourne barrister Alan C Archibald QC of Owen Dixon Chambers West in 2019.

Archibald is one of Australia’s leading barristers who has represented many major companies including ANZ and Apple. This tapestry portrait was commissioned by Archibald’s peers and colleagues to honour his career and in recognition of his significant contribution to the field. The portrait will hang in the Victorian Bar’s Peter O’Callaghan QC Gallery.

The design for the tapestry is by photographer John Gollings AM, and was taken inside the barrister’s chambers, with his leather-bound library of books behind him. Archibald is shown in traditional court dress with a lace jabot around his neck.

For weavers Chris Cochius and Pamela Joyce, the biggest challenge working on this project was its limited tonal and colour range. Sumac, or supplementary weft threads, were used for the fine lace detailing of the jabot and to capture fine detail in Archibald’s facial features.

In 2018 ATW collaborated with artist Emily Floyd on ‘The Declaration of the Rights of the Child’, a commission for the new Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Sunshine, Victoria.

Joan Kirner (1938 - 2015) was an Australian politician and the first female Premier of Victoria. She was a fierce advocate for gender equality, social inclusion and education.

The original artwork stems from the artist’s long-term research in the Ruth and Maurie Crowe Archive at the Victoria University Special Collections Library in Footscray. The Crow Archive includes significant printed materials and working papers that relate directly to the experiences of women and children in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Amongst the materials contained in the collection are several of Kirner’s writings, as well as pioneering works in relation to urban planning, community building and sustainability.

Floyd has reimagined and overlapped archival publication images from the Crow Collection to create colourful and commanding works for a contemporary audience. Amongst the materials referenced includes the artist’s tribute to the 1989 recognition of the ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Child’, and the 1975 ‘Women of the West’ publication, originally produced by the Sunshine Childcare Cooperate on the ‘needs of Sunshine women and their families’. The process of translating community history through the medium of tapestry weaving celebrates women’s contributions to society and will provide a playful and optimistic centerpiece for the new hospital.

Each of the three tapestries measures 2 x 1.3 m and will be suspended on curved battens in the main foyer of the hospital. As the artwork will be visible from both sides of the tapestry, the weavers have meticulously woven in the yarn ends to ensure that each image remain clear.

These tapestries have been funded by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, the State Government of Victoria and the Australian Hotels Association.

Emily Floyd is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

22 Temenggong Road, Twilight is a tapestry designed by Singaporean-based architect and winner of the 2016 Tapestry Design Prize for Architects (TDPA) Justin Hill.

The TDPA was launched in 2015 as a significant partnership between Architecture Media, the Tapestry Foundation of Australia and Creative Partnerships Australia, and invites architects, designers and architecture students to design an ambitious tapestry for a hypothetical site. The TDPA offers an opportunity for contemporary architects to re-engage with the long tradition and history between architecture and tapestry.

Justin Hill’s prize-winning design was chosen from an outstanding field of 117 entries from 76 entrants around the globe. Hill’s design is based on his personal experience living in Singapore.

Speaking of the tapestry, Hill said:

“The subject is my house, where I lived through my 30s and 40s… The scene is early one evening, taken from an adjusted photograph looking from the garden into my house, when the luminous blue of the short tropical twilight briefly equalises with the light within the house. Only then is the interior of the house revealed through layers of fraying blinds and window mesh, as the layers in the timber framing and walls of the house become visible.”

At the centre of the design are two figures depicted as silhouettes. These two figures are based on a photograph of Hill and his mother, taken during a recent family gathering in Tasmania.

This is the first major tapestry project undertaken by ATW Weaver Interns Karlie Hawking, Leith Maguire and Sophie Morris. Under the supervision of former ATW head weaver Sue Batten and master weavers Cheryl Thornton, Chris Cochius and Pam Joyce, Karlie, Leith and Sophie have applied the skills and techniques they have developed during their training to this stunning design. Prior to commencing work on this project, the interns undertook extensive sampling and design translation.

Justin Hill was born in Tasmania, and has been living in Singapore since 1981. He is a Director at the Kerry Hill Architects practices in Singapore and Perth, Western Australia. Hill is also an acknowledged stage designer, responsible for more than 30 productions in opera, drama and dance.

In 2017 a major new tapestry, Morning Star was commissioned for the new Sir John Monash Centre (SJMC) in Villers-Bretonneux, France. Morning Star was designed by prominent Australian artists Lyndell Brown and Charles Green.

The tapestry was generously supported by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, Australian Hotels Association, ANZAC Centenary Arts and Culture Fund, Marjorie M. Kingston Charitable Trust, Calvert-Jones Family, Anne and Mark Robertson OAM, Baillieu Myer AC and Sarah Myer, Yulgilbar Foundation, Chasam Foundation and the Myer Foundation.

The SJMC was designed by Cox Architects and Convergence Associates to create an evocative, emotional, informative and educational experience for visitors. The Centre will provide a lasting legacy in perpetuity commemorating the 46,000 Australian lives lost in the battles of the Western Front in World War 1 and will commemorate the Centenary of ANZAC.

Of the tapestries lasting contribution and symbolism, Brown and Green noted:

“Just as the SJMC provides both Australian and non-Australian visitors with an understanding of the impact of Australia’s involvement on the Western Front through an engagement with the places in which the Australians fought and the experiences of those who were there, so this tapestry aims to communicate to non-Australians and to Australian pilgrims an understanding of the places for which the Australians fought and the imaginary spaces that they carried with them.

The tapestry seeks to evoke the experience of arrival at a war, and in particular of Australians at the Western Front. With them on their arrival were their memories of Australia and their departure from home. These are the subjects of the tapestry. This tapestry aims to evoke the soldiers’ pathway from home to the Front, and emphasizes the incongruity between the Australia that they imagined as they journeyed further towards the Front. It seems to us that it is absolutely essential, first, to evoke a mental place of Australian freedom and clear light; and, second, to evoke the sea-borne passage towards the soldiers’ arrival at the Front. The tapestry emphasises the disjunction between the terrible experiences that the museum describes rather than repeats them.

There are two personal contexts that we offer to illuminate our work. Charles Green’s grandfather served as an Australian soldier on the Western Front. He was gassed and lived the rest of his life as an invalid, as a deeply disturbed shadow. Although he died decades before Green was born, that WW1 tragedy was very present in his family and especially with his grandmother, by then a war widow. And interestingly, she spoke often about the soldiers’ love of Sir John Monash, describing him to us with great devotion. Second, in 2007 we were Australia’s Official War Artists, deployed into Iraq and Afghanistan for a period longer than any War Artist since the program was reinstituted in 1996, and during those deployments we spent all our time amongst soldiers on active duty, surprised by their complete support for war artists and humbled by their sense of public service. Ever since, our art has been dominated by reflections on the aftermath of war and the survival of the past into the present."

The overall image shows dawn light, during winter, illuminating a pathway through eucalypt trees and bush towards sunlight. The inset images are a combination of departures to war by ship from Australia, punctuated by visual comments (snaps of these young men, those who were about to enlist). We have deliberately chosen to make these images almost monochromatic—very tonal with a subtle but definite minimum of colour—as the weavers at ATW have repeatedly demonstrated enormous, subtle virtuosity in translating very tonal images with precise grey ranges into tapestry.

Morning Star was unveiled at the official opening of the SJMC in April, 2018.

Lyndell Brown and Charles Green are represented by Arc One Gallery.

Guan Wei’s Treasure Hunt explores the impacts of globalisation through the legend of admiral Zheng He. Shifting levels of detail in the design provided a challenging opportunity for ATW weavers to work with two different warp sets.

The design is inspired by a large painted mural from Guan Wei's exhibition Other Histories at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney in 2006. Through the depiction of oceans, islands and desert interiors, Wei references navigation, exploration, migration and the influence of globalisation and cultural diversity. Other Histories was inspired by one of the Powerhouse Museum’s most mysterious objects: a small figure of the Chinese God of Longevity, unearthed in Darwin in 1879. Many writers and historians have suggested that the God of Longevity may be evidence of the arrival of a Chinese vessel from the voyages of Zheng He (1371-1432) in the early 15th century, more than 350 years before James Cook landed at Kurnell.

The eunuch admiral Zheng He led a legendary fleet of “treasure ships”, on which thousands of men set sail for foreign lands. Over nearly three decades, from 1405 to 1433, Zheng He made a series of official voyages, visiting numerous strange and wonderful places. Zheng He and his men collected rare spices, marvellous treasures and wondrous birds and animals. On these voyages the crew navigated new ocean routes and created nautical maps. Treasure Hunt represents the flora and fauna Zheng He might have encountered on his travels, including sea monsters drawn from Chinese and European mythology. The land shapes in the design reference 14th century Chinese maps. The Chinese symbols for East and West and the names of mountains have been painted in as well. Each smaller drawing within the work has a significance within European or Asian history, contributing to the overall narrative of the design.

The weavers worked with two different warp sets for this project. Double warps (two warps per bead) were used for the oceans and land, and single warp (one warp per bead) were used for the animals and other small details. This enabled the weavers to capture fine detail in the creatures, without having to add too much detail to the oceans and land. The weavers used more cotton than wool for this project to give the tapestry an appropriate lustre.

Guan Wei is represented by Arc One Gallery.

Listen to the Sound of Plants was designed by leading Australian artist Janet Laurence as a private commission in 2017. Comprised of images of plants from Laurence's extensive visual archive, the tapestry considers our human relationship to the natural world.

For more than 30 years Laurence has explored the interconnection of the natural word – animal, plant, mineral – through her multi-disciplinary practice. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video, she has employed diverse materials to explore the environmental challenges we face today. Creating immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between all living forms, Laurence’s work occupies the liminal zones where art, science, imagination and memory converge.

Laurence has collaged digital images of plants with images of paint poured over glass, to create layered transparencies within the design. ATW weavers Chris Cochius, Pamela Joyce and Cheryl Thornton selected a wide pallet of greens to create this tapestry, including cotton yarns - which can be used to highlight particular areas within the design. ATW dyer Tony Stefanovski dyed a new range of green cottons to achieve specific tones for the weaver’s requirements. The translation of digital image to tapestry provided a challenge for the weavers as they navigated the reflective surface elements of the design. Through very subtle colour mixing techniques and by employing many tones that are close together, the weavers were able to achieve a soft watery effect.

Janet Laurence is represented by Arc One Gallery.

John Wardle Architect’s Perspectives on a Flat Surface was the winner of the inaugural 2015 Tapestry Design Prize for Architects (TDPA). Funded by Judith Neilson AM, Perspectives on a Flat Surface was the first TDPA design to be translated into tapestry.

John Wardle Architect’s (JWA) were awarded joint first prize for the TDPA in 2015, along with a design by Kristen Green (director of KGA Architecture) with Michelle Hamer, entitled Long Term Parking. The designs were produced for the hypothetical site of the Australian Pavilion in the Giardini in Venice, designed by Denton Corker Marshall.

Having drawn inspiration from The Teatro Olimpico, JWA state:

"The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza designed by Palladio, houses Vincenzo Scamozzi’s trompe l’oeil street scenes. The design is renowned for creating the exaggerated perspective from each of Palladio’s grand portals. Our design refers to our own exchange between Italy and Australia. A series of imagined sets have been created that reverse Scamozzi’s inverted perspectives, forming a series of picture planes drawn toward the audience. Each multiplies shifting perspectives across one wall whilst allowing another to exaggerate the proportions of the space. The partial views and variant transmissions of light within each inverted chamber suggest a place that is ‘elsewhere’."

JWA have designed a new art gallery, performance space and garden for Neilson, founder of White Rabbit Gallery, with Durbach Block Jaggers, artist Janet Laurence and timber craftsman Khai Liew.

John Wardle Architects are based in Melbourne, Victoria.

Commissioned for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne in 2016, Life Burst is the ninth John Olsen AO OBE designed tapestry to be produced by the ATW.

In 2016 Life Burst was unveiled at the new Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, a project of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC). The VCCC delivered a $1 billion facility purpose-built for cancer research, treatment, education and care. The project was produced by the design consortium Plenary Health; builders’ Grocon PCL, architectural design teams Design Inc. and Silver Thomas Hanley, in partnership with McBride Charles Ryan.

As one of Australia’s greatest living artists, Olsen realises the creative potential of tapestry as a medium and has designed specifically for tapestry, following in the footsteps of some of the greatest artists in history, such as Rubens and Raphael. Olsen’s work is marked by a deep engagement with the Australian landscape. Having travelled widely through different parts of the country, Olsen describes his work as “an exploration of the totality of landscape”. Including the sun-like motif that is synonymous with Olsen’s practice, Life Burst was also designed to reflect the architectural rhythms of the atrium where the tapestry has been installed. Olsen visited the ATW to collaborate with weavers throughout the design process.

The weavers employed soumak (a supplementary weft technique) to accentuate certain areas of the tapestry. The majority of the tapestry has been woven with cottons to achieve a more silken effect and a lightness and transparency in the yellows and oranges. ATW yarn dyer Tony Stefanovski created several new tones of orange for this project.

The creation of Life Burst was generously supported by the Australian Hotels Association, Anne and Mark Robertson OAM, Janet Calvert-Jones AO and John Calvert-Jones AM through the Tapestry Foundation of Australia.

The intricate detail and circular design of 2002 Turner Prize Winner Keith Tyson’s Gordian Knot, provided a complex challenge for ATW weavers in 2016.

The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phriygian Gordium, associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for disentangling a seemingly impossible problem. In this design a central knot of fibres come together to form a modern day Gordian Knot—cosmological, mythological and sociological evolutions all being woven together as a reflection of the world.

To create this circular tapestry, a bottom edge was woven in to support the warp and removed when the circle was completed. In certain areas of the tapestry different weaving techniques including sumac and double warp have been used to create a three dimensional quality. The background colour is designed to recede into the display wall so the complex and colourful knot stands out.

After meeting with the weavers to gain an understanding of the process of tapestry weaving in 2014, Tyson stated that:

Seeing the fantastic work that is being, and has been done there, was both inspiring and incredibly humbling. The labour and intricate craftsmanship is just awesome, the results vibrant and arresting. After speaking with the weavers I think there is a real opportunity to do something striking and novel with the medium. I do not see this as simply a diffusion of my painting but a new way of making an object in its won right. The weaving together of the various strands, the strata of compressed time forming slowly into an image, all form a prefect conceptual fit with theme I have always been fascinated with.

Gordian Knot has been donated to the State Library of Victoria by Elisabeth Murdoch and Keith Tyson.

Keith Tyson is represented by Galerie Vallois, Paris and Pace Gallery, New York.

The late artist Sheena Wilfred of the Ritharrngu / Kriol Language groups, of the Wagilak clan of Dhuwa moiety, painted Bush Foods as a depiction of Australian floral and fauna. In 2015 the painting was translated into a tapestry by the ATW.

Over many years Wilfred developed a unique painterly style, created with small brushstrokes and bright colours. This style allowed Wilfred to emphasise the shifting seasonal moods of her landscapes, from the dry season to the wet season.

In Bush Foods various land formations are depicted across the top of the painting, creating a flattened perspective where objects in the foreground and background are the same size. Numerous forms of Australian bush tucker, such as yams and other root vegetables, are shown at the bottom of the painting, with their stems intact, as if they are still underground. Australian flora, including stems of wattle, curl over the colourful background and three little Ibis’ perch on rocks throughout the painting.

The tapestry was woven using a very bright colour palette, as requested by the client. A large tonal variation of colours in wool and cotton were used in each bobbin to reflect the tonality of the heavily mixed paint, and to respond to the very small brush strokes used in the work. Each bobbin was wound with 11 strands of yarn.

Sheena Wilfred is represented by Karen Brown Gallery.

The ATW was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of Sheena Wilfred in 2016. The ATW honours Sheena's contribution to contemporary art, and we hope she is remembered through her beautiful tapestry.

Imants Tillers designed Avenue of Remembrance to coincide with the centenary commemorations of Gallipoli. It was unveiled at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra in 2015.

Director of the AWM Dr Brendan Nelson said that the tapestry would “highlight the scale and grandeur of this imposing artwork, as well as commentating on the commitment of Australia’s service men and women over more than 100 years”. The tapestry was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial, through a very generous donation by the Geoff and Helen Handbury Foundation.

Tillers’ drew his inspiration for the design in-part from The Gallipoli letter—an 8000 word document written by Keith Murdoch during the early part of World War 1, remarking that:

"The letter is justifiably considered to be one of the National Library’s most important objects and the content of the letter is regarded as having helped bring an end to the Gallipoli campaign. In this letter Murdoch laments, “how young Australians, knowing that they would probably die were flocking to fight on Gallipoli’s “sacred soil’”.

The passionate and urgent tone of Murdoch’s letter and sometimes, even his turn of phase (“congealed incompetency”), immediately struck a chord with me when I first read it. Also by coincidence, it seemed to me, that I had already been using similar expressions in many of my works over the last decade: “There’s not a shred of hope”; “Stupefied by circumstance”; “The appalling silence”; “Purified by tears”; “A victim of what is infinitely close at hand”; to name a few. These were paintings reflecting on mortality, being, time, loss, grieving and remembrance, perhaps prompted by the death of my parents and several close friends in the passing decade. Typically these paintings combined image and text into a kind of visual spatial poem and I decided to use a similar approach for this project … I decided to eschew an exclusive focus on the tragic but national-defining event that was Gallipoli: (and its geography and topography) and to make reference to the whole of the Australian participation in World War 1.

The names of places where Australians were buried (rather than the actual theatres of war) are quoted as readymade poetic elements in my design. Thus familiar names such as ‘Anzac Cove’, ‘Shrapnel Valley’, ‘Lone Pine’, appear alongside other Middle Eastern locales: ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Gaza’, ‘Beirut’ and ‘El Alamein’. But the majority of the resting places of our war dead are European and less familiar French and Belgian places on what was called the Western Front: ‘Ypres’, ‘Polygon Wood’, ‘Poperinghe’, ‘Zonnebuke’, ‘Fromelles’, ‘Villers-Bretonneau’, ‘Peronne’, ‘Fleurbaix’ to name just a few.

In many places in the world including Australia there are ‘gardens of remembrance’ – beautiful, serene places commemorating the dead, especially those killed in the wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45. There are also ‘avenues of remembrance’ where each tree planted commemorates a particular, unique individual who died in action. These are beautiful, sad and redemptive places.

We all know that an ‘avenue’ is not only a regular planting of trees along a road, it is also more abstractly ‘a way to access or approach’ something – to an idea or even a memory. My ‘Avenue of Remembrance’ is, I hope, a way or means to remember not only those young men who died but also the profound loss and grief experienced by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers and sisters. By their friends, by their communities. By our nation."

Imants Tilles is represented by Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide and Bett Gallery, Hobart.

The ATW was thrilled to collaborate with one of Australia’s greatest living artists John Olsen AO OBE on Sun over the You Beaut Country in 2014. Olsen is one of the few remarkable artists that realizes the creative potential of tapestry and designs specifically for the medium.

Olsen noted that he was “thrilled to be coming out of retirement, for visual health reasons, to work with the talented weavers at the ATW." Prior to the establishment of the ATW in 1976, Olsen had tapestries made in workshops in France and Portugal. Olsen found that the skill and precision of ATW weavers challenged overseas workshops and has worked with the ATW on several occasions:

“On my recent visit to the ATW I saw the transformation between 1997 and now. The ATW weavers are producing such fine work both visually and technically and I would say the work produced there is better than the overseas workshops. And may I say, what a great thing this is to see”.

The weavers used more cotton than wool for this tapestry. Cotton allows more shine than wool, enabling the weavers to achieve a lightness and transparency in the yellows and oranges. Soumak was employed to highlight certain areas in the tapestry. ATW yarn dyer Tony Stefanovski created ten new cotton colours for this project, including John Olsen Yellow, John Olsen Orange and John Olsen Green.

Olsen’s work is housed in Olsen Gallery located in Sydney and New York and has been collected widely by national and international institutions.

In 2014 the ATW collaborated with Brook Andrew to create Catching Breath—the latest edition to the ATW’s Embassy Collection—currently on loan to the Australian High Commission in Singapore.

In an effort to bring forgotten histories of Indigenous Australians to the fore, Andrew recontextualizes found archival material. Catching Breath is a veiled portrait of a seemingly unknown subject, sourced from the artist’s archive of rare books, postcards and paraphernalia. This archive is an active medium that Andrew incorporates into his museum installations and exhibitions. The act and presence of the veil is well known for concealing or representing faith, culture and social values. In Catching Breath the subject peers through the veil with eyes clearly focused on the outside. This eye communication catches the viewer’s attention and breath, as they decide whether or not to lift the subjects’ veil, to reveal the unknown.

This project was proudly supported by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The design was woven in two parts, separating the portrait and the veil. Both parts were woven with the same palette, however the veil is a thinner shaped-piece, woven with an even weave (warp and weft visible in even amounts) and in a technique similar to cloth weaving. The veil was woven with a visible black warp, specially dyed at the Workshop by ATW dyer Tony Stefanovski, and silver Lurex thread.

Brook Andrew is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels.

In 2014 the ATW wove its way into history, becoming the first to translate an artwork by HRH The Prince of Wales into a unique tapestry.

The tapestry is a translation of a watercolour painting produced by His Royal Highness. After visiting the ATW in 2012 His Royal Highness was enchanted by the skill of our weavers and the vibrant colours of our Australian wool. The tapestry was later commissioned by Mr Tony Beddison AO. ATW weavers Pamela Joyce and Chris Cochius were thrilled to work on such an auspicious project.

During his visit His Royal Highness expressed interest in the ways that ATW is reimagining the ancient craft of tapestry weaving through a contemporary lens. He was also intrigued by our commitment to sustaining the art of dyeing, through the work of master dyer Tony Stefanovski. As Patron of the Campaign for Wool, His Royal Highness was very interested in the fact that our Australian wool product can be traced back to the farmer, and by our commitment to sustainable and humane animal practices.

The Premier of Victoria The Hon Dr Denis Napthine and Mr Beddison AO cut off the completed tapestry during a ceremony at the Australian Tapestry Workshop on the 14th of May 2014.

In 2011 the ATW partnered with the State Library of Victoria (SLV) to commission Sorry designed by Juan Davila to coincide with and celebrate the centenary of the dome.

Davila stated that the “Sorry” within the design is meant as an optimistic statement, to encourage a sense of moving forward together. The bright colour palette reflects this uplifting sentiment.

Never having worked in the tapestry medium before, Davila undertook conversations with ATW Director Antonia Syme and senior weaver Sue Batten about the process of translating a design into a work of tapestry. Davila was interested in the collaborative nature of the project, and made frequent visits to the ATW during the weaving process.

Davila is represented in numerous major state, regional and public collections in Australia, as well as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain.

Concerning the wading birds of the Warrnambool wetlands was designed by John Wolseley in 2012 and commissioned for the Warrnambool Base Hospital in Victoria.

Based on a watercolour by Wolseley, Concerning the wading birds of the Warrnambool wetlands captures the artist’s ongoing sensitivity to regional natural environments. This work grew out of Wolseley’s personal exploration of the wetlands and lakes of south-west Victoria. The original watercolour includes evocative and beautifully-rendered details of native flora and fauna, with a focus on representing birds from the region, particularly shore birds of the Warrnambool coast.

The mysterious and inviting realm that Wolseley has created will serve as a place for contemplation and escape for those who may be dealing with difficult health situations, while the beauty and energy of the work will engage with the broad cross-section of the community who pass through the hospital’s doors.

The project presented many challenges—for example, there was the difficulty of capturing the delicate watercolour marks without making the tapestry appear overly complicated. The artist and weavers also had to make crucial decisions about the colour palette, deciding to use colours in the tapestry that were slightly stronger and more intense than in the watercolour painting.

This tapestry was completed was generously supported by the Geoff and Helen Handbury Foundation through the Tapestry Foundation of Australia.

John Wolseley is represented by Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney.

ATW weavers were inspired and challenged through the translation of Anmanari Brown’s painting Kungkarrkalpa (The Seven Sisters) into tapestry in 2012. Brown was born in Purpurna and is culturally associated with the Pitjantjatjara people of the Northern Territory. She currently lives in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands in Western Australia, painting with the Papulankutja artists.

After being born in Purpurna in the 1930s, Brown grew up in the desert before kartiya (non-Aboriginal people) came to the lands, and eventually settled at Warburton mission in Western Australia.

When creating this painting Brown found herself running out of space on the canvas before her story was complete. She kept on painting—in some cases covering existing images. This created complex colours, with background colours appearing through the foreground imagery. When translating the artwork to a larger scale, the weavers faced the challenge of capturing the texture of the paint and mixed colours of the painting. The original work was generously loaned to the Workshop by Vivien Anderson Gallery. The resultant tapestry is painterly, while still retaining a sense of simplicity and power.

Like many senior Indigenous artists, Brown works in other art forms in addition to painting, including punu (carving utilitarian and sacred objects), tjanpi basket weaving and inma. Her work has been collected by many important national institutions.

In 2011 the ATW was privileged to translate the painting Kunawarritji to Wajaparni into a tapestry. The artwork was created collaboratively by eight Indigenous male artists from regions around the Canning Stock Route.

The artists—Clifford Brooks, Jeffrey James, Putuparri Tom Lawford, Peter Tinker, Richard Yukenbarri Tjakamarra, Charlie Wallabi Tjungurrayi, Helicopter Tjungurrayi and Patrick Tjungurrayi—come from a range of different cultural groups. Their varied histories and languages add depth and distinctiveness to the work. The artists have painted their ancestral country, and the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) and personal stories that mark the land.

The Canning Stock Route, running almost 2,000 km across Western Australia, marks an intersection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous histories. Their painting depicts the layout of the land where, for generations, their tribes have come together to trek from waterhole to waterhole, covering the 200km between Kunawarritji to Wajaparni.

The original painting was acquired by the National Museum of Australia in 2008. In creating the tapestry, the weavers faced challenges, especially since the NMA was unable to loan the painting. The weaving team visited Canberra to view and photograph the work, and three of the artists visited the ATW to discuss the interpretation with the weavers, as part of the collaborative process.

Kunawarritji to Wajaparni was commissioned by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, and supported by the Eldon Hogan Trust and The Jean Elizabeth Ryan Charitable Trust.