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.

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.

Eugenia Lim, a Melbourne-based artist of Chinese–Singaporean descent, works across video, performance and installation exploring how national identities divide and bond our globalised world.

The 'Future Fossils (Old Tjikko)' tapestry designed by Lim and woven by Tim Gresham fuses internet stock imagery, archival analogue photographs and a 3D marble render of a 9,500-year-old spruce tree to present an archive of an expanding virtual present. Lim created her tapestry design during Melbourne’s first COVID-19 lock-down in 2020 — a time when she felt increasingly confined to the digital. Thinking beyond her (and our) present, Lim envisioned a future when not only nature becomes fossilised, but so too do ideas of oppression, capitalism and surveillance.

The prominent vertical forms present in Lim’s design enabled Gresham to establish strong colour relationships from the tapestry’s beginning. Gresham used a fine #12 warp at 3.5 warps per cm, with five strands of ATW wool, and sometimes cotton, on each bobbin. The main challenges in weaving 'Future Fossils (Old Tjikko)' were capturing the intricate detail around the edges of the spruce tree and translating the flat tones of the digital print into mixed tapestry wefts.

Future Fossils (Old Tjikko) is generously supported by the Playking Foundation and Creative Victoria.

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.