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.

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.

Inspired by the landscape of Point Addis in Victoria, Angela Brennan designed Point Addis as a private commission in 2013.

Point Addis is situated between Torquay and Anglesea on the Great Ocean Road. The tapestry features a range of native Australian flora and fauna; including the Rufous Bristlebird, a bird who nests in the coastline cliffs of the Great Ocean Road, as well as various native eucalyptus and banksia varieties.

Brennan drew inspiration from the dramatic line where the land meets the sea and sky, and the big boulders and soft foliage of the area. Brennan sought to suggest a kind of all-encompassing view, vaguely influenced by Italian Renaissance artist Gozzolli (1421-1497) where the picture plane is pushed forward to create flatness, but also to impart a sense of distance and space.

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

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 long-time ATW supporters the Myer siblings funded Finding Kenneth Myer, designed by John Young, to commemorate the life of their late brother Kenneth Baillieu Myer AC DSC. The tapestry was gifted to the National Library of Australia where Kenneth Myer played several key leadership roles.

The tapestry design is made up of different segments, some superimposed on others, that reference the experiences and achievements of Kenneth Myer. This style of collaged image-making is characteristic of Young’s wider practice. The tapestry has been described as “eleven tapestries in one” and Young noted the difficulty he experienced in limiting the amount of information included in the design, while still expressing the vigour of Myer’s activities.

To draw inspiration, Young had access to a number of National Library of Australia archives. Each section of the design references a specific aspect of Myer’s life, namely his contribution to the arts, sciences and humanities. The small segment in the top right corner depicts a cotton flower with cotton DNA running behind it, symbolising Myer’s time working with the CSIRO. The three main portraits are from different times in his life: a few months before he died, as a young naval officer, and at age 13 taken at his father’s funeral. The words along the top allude to the wide array of Myer’s philanthropic and personal passions.

The three weavers working on his project had specific areas to interpret, each with its own palette and complexity. There were several discussions with Young about the "painterly" colours and tones he thought should be included in the tapestry. When the weavers found the pitch of his tones hard to match against the Workshop’s range of colours, they experimented widely with mixes, and eventually used a "cup of green tea" as the perfect match to create the main background colour.

John Young Zerunge is represented by Arc One Gallery.

Ben McKeown, descendant of the Wirangu language group of the Far West Coast of South Australia, designed Spring Street end in 2011 to reference the hidden Aboriginal history of Melbourne.

Commissioned for the State Library of Victoria (SLV) by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, with funding from the Marjorie J Kingston Charitable Trust, Spring Street end extends upon McKeown’s interest in the practicalities of urban space, dwellings, identity and culture.

The areas of black and dots in the corners of the design represent plants within the area of Spring St in Melbourne’s CBD. Using plants as a metaphor for the stories and physical / historical markers of the Indigenous history of this area, the artist comments on the attempted destruction of an Aboriginal presence within Melbourne, as a result of colonization, and the persistence of an Indigenous voice despite of this destruction.

Through their interpretation, the weavers have broken down the broad areas of colour within the design into shapes. Each area is treated as a separate segment, using contrasting tones to describe the detail. The weavers have kept the tones in the bobbin mixes similar, using an approximate 2/3 tone-shift, to keep the shapes created from the design clear and vibrant.

At the beginning of the interpretation process the weavers had the opportunity to take their samples into the SLV to discuss the design with McKeown. Through this experience the weavers discovered that the pitch of the blue they had used for the samples was too grey and not vibrant enough for the space. The weavers worked with ATW dyer Tony Stefanovski to develop a blue that sits slightly outside our standard range and has a more purple-blue base tone. During the sampling the weavers also noticed that the black, which dominates the borders of the shapes, was very cold. They experimented with mixing the black with other colours and have included a variety of additional tones in each bobbin, depending on what the black border is surrounding. For the red houses, a few brown threads have been included. For the borders that divide the sky and houses, blue threads have been included. This colour-mixing softens the harshness of the areas of black within the design.

The original artwork that the weavers referred to for this project was a digital print of a painting. Relying on a reproduced image can be potentially fraught, as each printer will produce slight variations in colour. Some accidental colour details, resulting from the printing process, have been incorporated into the tapestry schema, through discussion with the artist, to create a truly original interpretation of the design.

Ben McKeown is represented by Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne.

The design for Untitled (detail from Kiwirrkurra Women’s Painting) is a detail taken from a painting created by a group of seventeen women artists from the Kiwirrkurra community in Western Australia in 1999.

The detail selected for interpretation was painted by Nanyuma Napangati, who was assisted by Polly Brown Nangala. Napangati is of the Pintupi language group. Born in 1944, she is the sister of Charlie Tjapangati and is also related to Pinta Pinta Tjanpanangka and Kanya Tjapangati. She is a senior artist who has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas.

As with many indigenous works, the piece depicts locations, events, and relates a narrative depicting “designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, west of the Kiwirrkurra community. A large group of women camped at this site.....While at the site the women made nose bones...which are worn through a hole made in the nose web..... The women later continued their travels......as they travelled they gathered edible berries known as ‘kamurarrpa' or bush raisin, which they ground into a paste to form a type of damper. [1]

The Western Desert (Pintupi/ Naami/ Ngaatjatjarra) artists traditionally occupied the Western Desert region and now live mostly at Kintore and Kiwirrkurra, close to the Northern Territory and West Australian borders. The painting that the design is taken from was produced for an art auction to raise money for dialysis treatment for those affected by kidney disease in communities in the Western Desert.

The original painting is very large, and belongs to private owners in Sydney. As the Workshop was not able to borrow the original painting, project leader Cheryl Thornton travelled to Sydney to see the work. Careful colour matching with our wool colour samples and pantone colour cards was undertaken and comprehensive photographs were taken to use as a reference for the weavers. The red / brown ground of the painting is an important aspect of the tapestry. The palette is limited with subtle accidental variations within each colour. Unlike some indigenous artists, Napangati's marks in the form of dots are not clear separate dots but are linked by dragging her brush from one dot to the next. These marks in themselves were a challenge for the weavers.

This tapestry is the fourth tapestry produced for the Embassy Collection and is currently on loan to the Australian Chancellery in New Delhi.

Untitled (detail from Kiwirrkua Women’s Painting) was made possible by the support of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and corporate and private donations through the Tapestry Foundation of Australia.

Nanyuma Napangati is represented by the Papunya Tula Artists.

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.

Pedro Wonaeamirri was born in 1974 on Melville Island, the larger of the Tiwi Islands, off the coast of Darwin in the Northern Territory. He lives in the remote community of Milikapiti (Snake Bay). In 2005 the ATW translated Wonaeamirri’s design Pwoja Pukumani body paint design into tapestry.

The imagery of pwoja body painting designs and his carved Pukumani poles are the artist’s link to the traditions and future of the Tiwi people. Tiwi art is derived from ceremonial body painting and the ornate decoration applied to Pukumani funerary poles, Yimawilini bark baskets, and associated ritual objects made from the Pukumani ceremony. Traditionally, deceased Tiwi people are buried on the day they pass away, but the Pukumani ceremonies are performed six months to several years after the death. Over the years, Wonaeamirri has developed his own style. Unusually, he has chosen to use a traditional wooden comb, giving his paintings a stylized look, whilst continually experimenting with combinations of blocks of ochre background and intricate pattern. Wonaeamirri is also well known for his Pukumani pole carvings. He says much of his inspiration comes from childhood memories of watching the elders paint and carve their designs.

Pwoja Pukumani body paint design is the second tapestry to be commissioned by the Tapestry Foundation of Australia, as part of the Embassy Tapestry Collection and was supported by private donations.

To honour and celebrate Danish architect, Jørn Utzon’s design of the Sydney Opera House, the ATW translated Homage to Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach into a monumental tapestry, spanning 2.67 x 14.02m, in 2003.

Utzon (1918–2008) was the designer of Australia’s most distinctive national icon, the Sydney Opera House (SOH). He won the tender for the Opera House in 1957, but the project was besieged by political wrangling, budget overhauls and compromises to his design resulting in Utzon’s resignation before the building’s completion in 1973. Later acknowledged as the creator of an architectural masterpiece, he was awarded a Hononary Doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2003 and in the same year received a Companion of the Order of Australia, as well as architecture’s most prestigious international award, the Pritzker Prize.

As the interior of Utzon’s original design had never been fully realised, he was recommissioned in 2000 to oversee a redevelopment of the building’s interior. The first space to be redesigned to Utzon’s specifications was the Reception Hall, re-named The Utzon Room, in his honour. The venue features the tapestry Homage to Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, inspired by CPE Bach’s Hamburg Symphonies and Raphael’s painting Procession to Calvary. The tapestry derives from a collage featuring torn strips of coloured paper writ large into floating forms that take on an architectural dimension. Against the pale-blonde timber floor and walls, the tapestry glows with vibrancy and movement. The shapes tumble across the length of the work in an almost musical configuration: like a notation of syncopated acoustic elements forming point and counterpoint over the picture plane.

Due to the large scale of the tapestry, the weavers wove the design on it’s side.

The SOH was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007. Utzon became only the second person to have received such recognition for one of his designs during his lifetime.

Rising suns over Australia Felix was the first of several tapestries designed by John Olsen AO OBE and woven by the ATW in 1997.

After working with tapestry workshops in France and Portugal in the 1960s, Olsen found the work of ATW weavers to be world-class and has been a steadfast supporter of the ATW ever since. Olsen is widely considered to be one of Australia’s most important living artists. He is known for his lyrical drawings and paintings that feature native Australian flora and fauna. His works are constructed with multiple meandering lines, energetic life-forms and the rich colours that make up the Australian landscape.

Rising suns over Australia Felix, commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was inspired on a return flight to Australia, at the exact moment when Olsen witnessed a sunrise and saw the ascending orb gradually illuminate the expansive land below. The scene is split into two distinct halves – sky and land – but in both realms the surface is dappled, suggesting the luminosity of the dawn scene. The monumental scale of the tapestry effectively conjures the vastness of the Australian continent.

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

It was a true honour for ATW weavers to translate Untitled, designed by Anmatyerre elder Emily Kame Kngwarreye into a tapestry in 1997.

Kngwarreye was born at the beginning of the twentieth century and grew up in a remote desert area known as Utopia, 230 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, distant from the art world that sought her work. She came to painting later in life, producing over 3000 paintings in her eight-year career—an average of one painting per day.

The extensive body of work that she produced was inspired by her experiences as an Anmatyerre elder and her custodianship and dedication to the women’s Dreaming sites of her clan country, Alhalkere.

In 1997 ATW weavers Grasyna Bleka and Milena Paplinska had the exciting challenge of interpreting Kngwarreye’s complex visual language into a tapestry.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye's work has been collected by many major Australian and international art institutions.

Emily passed away on September 2, 1996. The ATW hopes that her tapestry will stand as a reminder of her significant contribution and creative legacy.

In 1996 Wamungku- My Mother’s Country, designed by Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, was translated into tapestry. Munduwalawala (c1937-2002) was a member of the Mara Community from the Gulf country in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

For many years Munduwalawala worked as a stockman on Nutwood Downs Station and, while travelling, met the well-known Indigenous artist Albert Namatjira, an encounter that was to influence his artistic development.

Munduwalawala’s large-scale tapestry Wamungku, My Mother’s Country was commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra. The image is replete with references to Munduwalawala’s ancestral land on the Limmen Bight River in the Gulf country. The scene depicts a red sky and the symbolically important Four Archers, which represent hill formations in the Limmen Bight landscape, relating to stories of the creation myth. The image also includes animal totems such as kangaroos, snakes and sea eagles. One of the totems depicted repeatedly across the image –the white-breasted sea eagle – was the subject of an earlier, smaller tapestry woven by the Workshop. The sea eagle, known as Ngak Ngak in Munduwalawala’s native language, often appeared in his paintings as an emblem of vigilance, a totem keeping protective watch over his beloved homeland.

Ginger Riley Munduwalawala’s work has been collected by major national and international institutions.