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.

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.

Park No 2, designed by Yvonne Boag in 2009, was funded by several Victorian Government departments: the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the Education Department and Arts Victoria. The tapestry was gifted to the Victorian International School in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, to celebrate the relationship between the school and the state of Victoria.

Sharjah is the third largest city in the United Arab Emirates, after Dubai and Abu Dhabi, with a population of 800,000. It is located approximately 50 km north of Dubai and overlooks the Persian Gulf.

Established in 2007, the Victorian International School provides a Victorian based curriculum for the international community of Sharjah. When designing this tapestry, Boag sought to reflect the physical landscape of Victoria, while being mindful of the needs of the school’s multicultural student community and respectful of the cultural traditions of the predominantly Muslim Sharjah population.

Boag’s design functions as a description of the soft grey green gums and harmonious colours of the sometimes sparse Australian bush. The meditative, abstracted landscape will provide a memory of home for Australian students and a view of an exotic land faraway for students from elsewhere. The design was one of 7 gouache studies produced by the artist in preparation for the commission. The works have an open composition and a tranquil flow, that belies the unsettled danger of the blackened tree trunks. The final design contains a young, supple tree in the centre of the design. This tree, bursting into life, is a suitable metaphor for a school environment.

In interpreting this small painting into tapestry, the weavers had to make some complicated colour choices. When interpreting an artwork into tapestry, the change in scale and medium effects how the colours interact with each other and the forms within the work. The palette of this series has very pastel tones. The shades in this work are too pale for many of our woollen yarn colours. All of what appear to be large flat planes of colour are in fact made up of several tones of yarn. A high proportion of cotton has been used in some of the colours, as the cotton holds dye in a different way to woollen yarns and can be dyed to match much paler tones.

Open world, designed by John Young in 2005, was commissioned by the State Government of Victoria as a gift from the people of Victoria to the people of Nanjing in China, marking the 25th anniversary of the sister-city relationship between Nanjing and Melbourne and to celebrate the completion of the then new Nanjing Library.

Young, who was born in Hong Kong in 1956 and moved to Australia in 1967, explores his own artistic and cultural history through his practice, while responding to issues in Australian art history.

Open world is a composite image incorporating Australian and Chinese references. The background is of an 18th-century Chinese tapestry in reverse, depicting foreigners offering gifts to a Chinese ruler. A cluster of photographic imagery lines the edges of the tapestry: a Eurasian women in a Chinese wedding dress; Victoria’s Great Ocean Road; a cloudscape; and pictures of the cherry blossom (native to Nanjing province) and pink heath (Victoria’s floral emblem). The surface is dotted with Chinese calligraphy and the names of lands discovered by the 15th-century Chinese explorer, Admiral Zheng He. The Chinese characters layered over the top of the design are previous historical names for Nanjing. Young arranged for these names to be written by a Chinese calligrapher in the appropriate script for the historical period in which the name was used. There are also three words in English mirroring the Chinese, Kulin Nation, Naarm and Bareberp, which are all Aboriginal/Koori names for Melbourne/ Victoria.

In its bicultural references Open World continues to examine Young’s evolving exploration of transcultural concerns and the diasporic experience.

John Young Zerunge is represented by Arc One Gallery.

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.

To celebrate the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s 150^th anniversary, the Melbourne Cricket Club tapestry, designed by Robert Ingpen AM was woven by the ATW in 2002.

The monumental tapestry, measuring 2.00 x 7.00m, depicts key members of the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC). Placed in chronological order, the figures depicted range from the MCC’s first president, Frederick Powlett, to champion Australian batsman-keeper Adam Gilchrist and Socceroo Kevin Muscat, who kicked Australia’s only goal in its 1-0 victory over Uruguay in a 2001 World Cup qualifying match.
Included are some of the greats of football and cricket, memorable sporting events such as the 1956 Olympic Games and Austral Wheel Races and other notable occasions like royal and papal tours, Billy Graham’s Crusade and the performance by the Three Tenors.

Ingpen painted the figures individually and then painted a broader yellow / orange canvas, allowing the weavers to position the figures as the tapestry developed on the loom.

The tapestry hangs proudly outside the Long Room at the MCG, where members and visitors can admire and identify those who have made a significant contribution to what the MCG is today.

Robert Ingpen is represented by Melaleuca Gallery in Victoria.

Prominent British artist Patrick Heron designed five tapestries after visiting Australia in 1990, the last of which, 22 July 1989, was woven at the ATW shortly after Heron’s death in 1999.

Heron (1920-1999) was a prominent figure in 20th-century British art associated with the St Ives School, based in Cornwall and led by Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.

Heron came to Australia in 1990 to undertake an artist residency at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and was enthusiastic about the translation of his work into tapestry. In total five tapestries were woven by the ATW, all based on small gouaches Heron painted specifically for tapestry interpretation. Heron died just before the tapestry 22 July 1989 was completed in 1999.

The design for 22 July 1989 was based on a small gouache painting created by Heron.

The original design has a fluidity of surface, derived from the material qualities of the water-based paint. Heron’s gouache works are often lightly executed, with loose, orbicular forms accenting the watery effects. In 22 July 1989 arabesques of vivid colours - orange, violet and viridian - suggest flowering shrubs like pimpernels and bell heather, native to the landscapes of Cornwall.

Heron relished the collaborative process of tapestry making, engaging in ongoing discussions revolving around colour, surface and scale. He delighted in the final outcome of tapestry production, making effusive statements as in a letter to the weavers of his first tapestry:

“I had never imagined you would be able to do something that was so subtle! It really is incredibly related to the gouache. In certain lights it is almost as if the water of the original was still moving about across its surface! I should love to do a number of other tapestries with you, now that I have seen what you are able to do.” [1]

Patrick Heron’s work has been collected by major public art institutions worldwide.

[1] Patrick Heron, letter to Anne Kemp and Barbara Mauro at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, 18 December 1991, quoted in Artists' Tapestries From Australia 1976-2005, The Beagle Press, 2007, p.264.