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.

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.