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.

Recognised as one of Australia’s most significant abstract artists, John Coburn’s work remains as impactful today as it did over his five decades of painting. Paying homage to the long-standing relationship between the Australian Tapestry Workshop and John Coburn, the ATW has woven over 20 Coburn designs.

‘Early Morning Rain’ (1972) designed by John Coburn AM, is the second major commission for the ATW in 2023. ‘Early Morning Rain’ was originally painted as a maquette for tapestry in 1972 but was not realised into woven form until this year.

Over his five-decade career, John Coburn established a reputation and legacy as one of Australia’s most significant abstract artists.

During his career, Coburn regularly designed works for tapestry, the iconic stage curtains at the Sydney Opera House being one example. The Australian Tapestry Workshop has had a long-standing relationship with Coburn and producing over 20 tapestries in our 47-year history. It is due to this connection and depth of experience working with Coburn, that we can bring to life the original maquette for ‘Early Morning Rain.’

Compared to his tapestry collaboration with the French workshops, his designs produced by the then Victorian Tapestry Workshop were categorised by a lively collaboration and fresh approach. The coarser weave of the Gobelin technique used at the Australian Tapestry Workshop gave an increased scope for the rich mixtures of colour and Coburn enjoyed being in conversation with the skilled Australian weavers.

Shape and tone, two keystones of Coburn’s work have continuously tested the skill of the ATW weavers; with the ability to form a beautifully articulated ‘Coburn curves’ and to gently gradate colour through a ‘Coburn shape’ considered the mark of an accomplished weaver.

With a relatively limited palette of 48 colours, the saturated tones and graphic iconography of ‘Early Morning Rain’ are a brilliant example of the abstract artistry of Coburn and will translate beautifully into tapestry.

‘Early Morning Rain’ is led by Tim Gresham and the weavers on this project include Cheryl Thornton, Amy Cornall and David Pearce. It will take approximately 3 months to complete.

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.

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.

Hayley Millar Baker is a proud Gunditjmara woman and a research-driven, contemporary artist based in Melbourne. She uses photography and multimedia to examine how human memory is constructed and distorted through story-telling, place and time.

Millar Baker’s monochromatic 'I screamed aloud (I Will Survive)' tapestry, woven by ATW weaver Amy Cornall, interrogates the recall of a personal childhood memory — the experience of standing on a vast coastline, looking out into infinite space — in adult form.

Speaking about the highly collaborative nature of tapestry creation, Millar Baker noted that ‘Only recently have I begun collaborative work, and the Weaving Futures project was my first experience thinking outside of my solo practice. The 'I screamed aloud (I Will Survive)' tapestry has allowed me to consider how my work can translate into other mediums’.

During their meetings, Millar Baker and Cornall discussed crucial elements of the tapestry design, including maintaining the drape of the fabric, a sense of the movement and wind, and the moody atmosphere. Using a fine #12 warp at 3.5 warps per cm, with five strands of yarn per bobbin, Cornall deftly mixed a neutral yarn palette from black to white in a combination of warm and cool, using wool and cotton. The perspective of the ocean surface with its repetition of waves was challenging for Cornall to weave and capture, something she achieved by reserving her darkest black for the deep shadows combined with soft atmospheric blends.

In late 2020 the ATW completed the ‘Wurundjeri Biik, yalinguth, yalingbu, yirramboi’ (Wurundjeri Country, yesterday, today, tomorrow) tapestry designed by Wurundjeri-willam (Wurundjeri-baluk patriline) artist Mandy Nicholson. Commissioned by the City of Melbourne, the tapestry has been designed to welcome visitors to a new meeting space at Melbourne Town Hall. The tapestry was cut from the loom in December 2020 by Lord Mayor of the City of Melbourne Sally Capp and Mandy Nicholson.

Nicholson's vibrant tapestry design is informed by her work translating and reviving indigenous languages, with a focus on her mother tongue, Woiwurrung. Traditional motifs of south-eastern Australia, blended with Nicholson's contemporary interpretation, form the banks of a river. The river represents the veins that keeps Country alive. This notion is underpinned through language; Wominjeka Wurundjeri-al - Naarm-u - Yalinguth - Yalingbu - Yirramboi - Tharangalk biik - Wurru wurru biik - Baanj biik - Biik dui - Biik-ut.

The text references Nicholson's navigation of spiritual connections to Country, while living in the city, which, is often misconceived as less authentic. The artist says of her experiences “I don't see the buildings of concrete, I see what's beneath, I see the layers of Wurundjeri Country that form part of both my physical and spiritual body.”(1) Tharangalk biik - Wurru wurru biik - Baanj biik - Biik dui - Biik-ut are some of the interconnecting layers of Wurundjeri Country:

“Tharangalk Biik: (Bunjils' home): Meaning the Forest Country above the clouds, a reflection of what is below. This statement shows that all layers are connected and if flipped are the same.

Wurru Wurru Biik (Sky Country): Is where we see the physical forms of our Creation Beings like Bunjil and Waa that watch over us.

Baanj Biik (Water Country): Is where life is sustained, represents cultural survival and renewal.

Biik-dui (On Country): Is where the plants grow that we utilise for food or implements, it is where we walk, dance and perform ceremony;

Biik-ut (Below Country): Is where we collect ochre to paint our bodies for ceremony and dance, it is also where the roots of plants bind it together.”(2)

Nicholson's bold and graphic design led ATW weavers Chris Cochius, Amy Cornall and Cheryl Thornton to set each mixed weft bobbin before commencing the tapestry. The weavers explored the design through multiple tapestry samples to investigate the subtle tonal shifts found in the design's undulating gradients. The text, woven in mixed threads of blue, black, red and brown, is set against a palette of vibrating green and blue, with subtle purple and ochre tones, including a new green created by ATW's specialist dyer Tony Stefanovski. Woven without a hem, the very long (4.32 m), but narrow (0.58m) tapestry design has enabled weavers to work at safe distances from each other during the COVID19 pandemic.

Since 2005 work by urban-based First Nations artists has been a collecting priority for the City of Melbourne’s Acquisitions Panel, which had also been interested in commissioning a tapestry. The opportunity for Nicholson to design a tapestry, for the ATW to weave, provided the perfect occasion to bring these interests together, resulting in this beautiful and meaningful acknowledgement of country.

Nicholson is an artist and Traditional Custodian of Melbourne and its surrounds. Nicholson completed an Honours degree with Monash University in 2011, majoring in Aboriginal archaeology and minoring in geology. She has worked in the Aboriginal (Wurundjeri-specific) fields of art, culture, song, and language for over twenty years. She has managed the Djirri Djirri Dance Group for five years, which teaches leadership skills to young Wurundjeri girls through dance and song creation. Her most recent role was as project officer at the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL) for five years. Mandy’s heritage is Wurundjeri, Dja Dja wurrung and Ngurai-illum wurrung (all Victorian) on her father’s side, and German on her mother’s. Mandy is currently a PhD candidate researching how the Gunditjmara people from Western Victoria connect to their Country when they don’t live on Country.

References cited: 1, 2: Nicholson, M, (2018) ‘Mandy Nicholson (Wurundjeri, Dja Dja Wurrung and Ngurai Illam Wurrung)’, https://www.deadlystory.com/page/culture/my-stories/NAIDOC-week/Mandy_Nicholson, accessed 14 August 2020.

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.

'Hear the Plant Song' — the second tapestry designed by artist Janet Laurence for the ATW, was cut from the loom in June 2020 by Andrew and Cathy Cameron. The Cameron's commissioned the tapestry for their private collection of Australian contemporary art.

Distinctive, complex and beautiful, the 'Hear the Plant Song' tapestry was hand-woven over 1300 hours by ATW weavers Chris Cochius, Amy Cornall, Cheryl Thornton and Sue Batten.

The fragility of the natural environment drives Laurence's international art practice. Across photography, sculpture, video and installation, she explores the deep interconnection of life forms and ecologies. The design allowed the artist to build on her knowledge of the way the ATW weavers can transform a digital image into a tapestry. 'Hear the Plant Song' invites the viewer to submerge themselves in a subaqueous like undergrowth. The design is a composite digital image that draws on Laurence's extensive image archive, layered with scans of paint dragged on glass resulting in an ethereal, transparent effect.

ATW weavers captured the reflective qualities of Laurence's tapestry design; transparent glass areas, lines of light as well as soft painterly and watery effects, by using very subtle colour mixing techniques and a concise range of green and blue tones. ATW master dyer Tony Stefanovski dyed three new wool tones and one new cotton tone in the ATW's on-site colour laboratory to achieve the specific greens needed.

Reflecting on the commissioning process, Mr Cameron noted 'the trust placed in the weavers by Janet, to not copy, but transform her design into tapestry was a process that has been so interesting to observe. We are thrilled with the result, and we look forward to living with and contemplating 'Hear the Plant Song' for many years to come'.

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 2010 Ngayuku Ngura (This is my country), a painting designed by senior Pitjantatjara artist and elder Nyankulya Watson, was translated into tapestry as the latest addition to the Embassy Collection series, commissioned by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia.

Watson was born around 1938 at a rock hole near Mt Aloysius, in remote Western Australia, close to the South Australian border. As a teenager she lived at Anumarapiti, now an outstation of Irrunytju, later moving to Ernabella in northern South Australia (then a Presbyterian mission). Watson was a founding member of Irrunytiju Arts and she now lives in the Nyapari and Kalka communities in South Australia.

Speaking of the painting, Watson notes that there “are many rock holes close to the place I was born. I would travel to all these places with my parents. Ngayuku ninti pulka (I know all this country). Aloysius is the main rock hole. The other rock holes in this painting are Pukara, Anumarapiti, Palki, Punuwara, Wangutiti, Atanga, Yaliri, Plalkarli and Wirkuratja. This country is in Western Australia. The lines are the travelling tracks in the sand from all the people walking to the waterholes and places where the bush foods grow."

The strong red and magenta tones, contrasting with the black of the background, create a tension which is disrupted by the change in scale and media, from painting to tapestry. To help balance the black background with the reds, the weavers used a blue-black and a grey-black, allowing the blacks to recede slightly, and the reds to eloquently emerge.

Ngayuku Ngura (This is my country) was commissioned by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, and funded by private donations.

Watson now paints for Tjunga Palya and Ninuku Artists in South Australia.

The ATW collaborated with artist David Noonan in 2009 to produce Untitled, a complex design that juxtaposes several images in an effort to subvert traditional narratives, a technique synonymous with Noonan’s wider oeuvre.

Noonan often looks to things like 70s craft books and gothic architecture to help inform his narratives. The timelessness frequently found in his work is contradicted by the high-tech elements he often employs, adding to the tension his work generates. Noonan deliberately obscures the absolute nature of his narrative, allowing the viewer to be drawn into his theatrical compositions.

Prior to becoming a tapestry, the design was produced through silk-screen printed on jute canvas, and exhibited at the Tate Modern, London, as part of the group show titled Rings of Saturn in 2006. The weavers have used a printed version of the digital design as reference for their translation. In approaching the work, the weavers had no information about the conceptual content of the image. The decision to withdraw this information was made by Noonan.

The complex nature of the imagery provided a great challenge to the weavers as they sought to identify elements to exaggerate through the translation from printed design to woven tapestry. Some elements within the work are identifiable, while others have remained ambiguous. The weavers aimed to retain the sense of uncertain narrative generated by the original artwork, where cryptic shadows morph into identifiable forms.

This tapestry has a restricted palette, which has been extended by expanding the number of tones between the predominant shades. The weavers are working on what is essentially a gray scale that runs from black to white. The tapestry contains a moderate proportion of cotton, as cotton is able to hold faint colours more successfully than woolen yarn.

The tapestry was shown in the travelling exhibition British Art Show 7: In the Days of he Comet, curated by the Hayward Gallery in London, touring for 15 months across different cities in the UK. It was also selected by Noonan as his only work to be displayed at the 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, which was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2010.

The work is now in the collection of Danielle and Daniel Besen.

David Noonan is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney.
 

Produced to function as a tapestry and a working musical instrument, the experimental Theremin Tapestry was designed by the artist-collective Chicks On Speed, in collaboration with Hangar, in 2009.

Chicks on Speed create multi-disciplinary work, moving through performance art, electronic dance music, collage, textile design and fashion. Through designing the Theremin Tapestry they allowed the traditional art of tapestry weaving to coexist with the world of contemporary sound art.

Some fragments of the tapestry have been woven in copper. These filaments behave as theremin antennas. Four sensors in the tapestry detect the presence of the human body from over a meter away and cause the tapestry to emit sound.

Chicks on Speed is a feminist music and fine art ensemble, formed in Munich in 1997

Chinese artist Song Ling designed Kong Fu – our dream 1, as a commission for Deakin University in 2009.

The graphic style, characteristic of Ling’s work, lends itself perfectly to the University environment. Ling manipulates his chosen imagery using a computer to deconstruct, exaggerate and intensify the elements or layers he is working with. He uses printouts of these manipulated images as his template, and then hand-traces them onto canvas. While from a distance his paintings look like computer-generated prints, when the viewer moves closer, the hand of the artist is clearly visible on the canvas’ surface.

This tapestry is not as straightforward as it may initially appear. The challenge for the weavers was to match the colours of the tapestry as tonally close to the original painting as possible. The weavers used a silver Lurex thread for the silver grey towards the top of the image. Circles can be very difficult for the weavers to get perfect as steps are generated along the horizontal axis.

The artist was curious to see how his work would translate at a larger scale. During his visit to the Workshop he decided the yellow used in the samples for the background was too strong and came forward too much, dominating the other colours. After discussions, a lighter, greener yellow was chosen, to sit into the background. He also pointed out on his visit to the Workshop that the Chinese characters are not an exact translation of the English text. The Chinese text translates to “Come on...”, but Song Ling decided that “I’m ready!” was a stronger comparative translation.

Song Ling is represented by Niagara Galleries in Melbourne.

In 2008 the magnificent Alice Bayke tapestry, designed by Yvonne Todd, was woven at the ATW. The tapestry was commissioned by the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG), with funds from Tim Fairfax AM and Gina Fairfax, to celebrate QAG’s continued relationship with the Pacific.

The QAG sought to engage an artist from the Pacific region that was interested in collaborating with ATW weavers. After extensive conversations with the QAG curators and the ATW, Alice Bayke an image by New Zealand photographer Yvonne Todd, was selected.

Alice Bayke was taken from a series of five photographs, titled Sea of Tranquillity, created by Todd in 2002. The original artwork was inspired by Todd’s fascination with iconic imagery from 1960s of celebrity icon Priscilla Presley. Yvonne was compulsively drawn to the heightened artifice of Presley’s appearance:

“I was intrigued by the heavy-handed cosmetology of her look. Wigs and false eyelashes and pale lips. Her strange, doll-like appearance. I was also occupied with repressed emotions, deflation, piety and stoicism, vigilance and austerity.’… The emotional repression of the subjects corresponds with the Moon as a symbol of human separateness and loneliness.”

Interpreting a photographic work of this nature presented a number of technical challenges for the weavers, such as the hair, skin and transparency of the gown sleeves. A subtle palette of yarns was selected to create complex mixes, in an attempt to achieve the quality of light and tone present in the photograph. ATW dyer Tony Stefanovski dyed many delicate colours especially for this project.

Yvonne Todd won the prestigious New Zealand ‘Walter's Prize' in 2002, has shown in numerous international group shows and her work has been collected by major New Zealand institutions.

Through the arts program at Mornington Island Arts and Craft Centre, a group of 7 Bentinck Island women came together to paint Dulka Warngiid (Land of All) in 2008. The tapestry was commissioned for the Melbourne Recital Centre, with funding provided by the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation.

Unlike other indigenous Australian communities the Kaiadilt (Bentinck Island) have no graphic, pre-European art tradition, aside from body painting. These artists have been able to build up a collective and personal repertoire of images and symbols- birthplaces, rocks, wild flowers, story places, hunting grounds, reefs, waterholes, body paint and scars. In a broad sense, each of these artists came to painting via more traditional practical artistic pursuits, such as making hibiscus bark string, singing, weaving dilly bags and making and repairing fishing nets. Each of the artists explored the materiality of the paint and surface while representing their own connectedness to land, ancestors and community narratives.

"We each painted our country area which was special for us. Our painting is all of our country. That's what the title means — country, place land— land of all."

While the development of the artist's individual mark-making practices has undoubtedly been influenced by the collective, it is often with a different thematic focus. For example, Netta Loogatha composes her paintings as landscapes, while Sally Gabori often focuses on describing a narrative event, like the attempted murder of her brother, King Alfred. Paula Paul's mark making often describes scarification (ritual body decoration), and her marks are purposely raised from the surface of the canvas to emphasize their tactile nature.

The very painterly nature of the brush strokes lends itself to the interpretive process, giving the weavers a lot of room to keep true to the forms of the painting, while providing a lot of information and detail with the tapestry process. There are 7 different styles of painting contained within the image and each artist has a different approach to mark making. This meant that the weavers had to rethink and adjust their approach for each separate area within the design.

In 2006 Angela Brennan’s design It was not I that looked was translated into tapestry by the ATW.

The enigmatic title of this tapestry is taken from the 20th-century modernist painter Paul Klee. In one of his journals, Klee wrote, “it was not I who looked at the trees, the trees were looking at me.” Brennan exercises a textual slippage by swapping the word “trees” for “forests” and turned the whole wry phrase into an extroverted and playful painting. The eccentric letters, unmatched fonts and cursive script march across the canvas in an almost musical fashion. The letters are no longer simply part of a lifeless alphabet, but seem to wobble and gyrate as if they themselves are animate beings.

Brennan was intrigued by the process of translating the painting into tapestry. She visited the Workshop several times during the weaving to see the preliminary samples, and to suggest adjustments for colour mixing and scale. For Brennan, the developing tapestry took on the sense of a new life. Brennan noted, “I was fascinated to see the work unfurl before my eyes, emerging independently from its original source.”

The weavers involved in this project were intent upon retaining the gestural quality and energy of Brennan’s painting. In doing this they did not aim to imitate paint, but instead give the shapes a robust weaving feel, with stepped edges and mixed colour in the right areas. The palette is limited with colours repeated throughout the work, giving a sense of unity to the whole.

Brennan’s work is housed in numerous public and private collections both in Australia and overseas. She is represented by Niagara Gallery.

In 2006 weavers of the ATW had the pleasure of interpreting Glyphs, designed by G W Bot, into a tapestry spanning 1.9 m x 3.97 m.

G.W. Bot is a contemporary Australian printmaker, sculptor and graphic artist who has created her own signs and glyphs to capture her close, personal relationship with the Australian landscape. Her artist’s name derives from ‘le grand Wam Bot’—the early French explorers term for the wombat, which she has adopted as her totemic animal.

G W Bot is represented by Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney.

In 2004 the ATW wove Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Mappamundi — a design composed from a melting pot of Eastern and Western history, juxtaposed on an image of a map— visual components that are now synonymous with Sheikh’s wider practice.

Sheikh’s fascination for painted maps was triggered by a picture postcard he found in the British Library bookshop of a 13th-century map of the world, known as the Ebstorf Mappamundi. When Sheikh learned that the original parchment map was destroyed during the allied bombing in World War II, he used the image as inspiration for making his own world maps. Over five years Sheikh created approximately 15 versions of Mappamundi, each a celebration of Eastern and Western culture, history and contemporary events. His Mappamundis& feature stylistic influences, ranging from Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Piero della Francesca to Mughal painting, and contain a medley of Hindu and Muslim references to religious ritual, family customs, Indian village life and contemporary events, such as the destruction of the Bamyam Buddha in Afghanistan. The Mappamundi tapestry depicts the map framed in each corner by the symbolic figures of Mary Magdalene reaching out to Christ, Kabir weaving the shroud, Rama chasing elusive deer and a mad mystic, dancing. By an uncanny coincidence, the dimensions of the finished tapestry resemble those of the original, lost Ebstorf Mappamundi.

Gulammohammed Sheikh has exhibited widely in major international institutions.