Essay by Thomas Cronenberg

Artapestry7 Exhibition catalog
Essay

Tapestry in Australia

By Thomas Cronenberg

M Nearly 50 years after its inception, the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW) in Melbourne in the state of Victoria in south-eastern Australia has become the epicentre of woven tapestry in the country. Established as Victorian Tapestry Workshop in 1976 to make and promote outstanding contemporary tapestry, Australian Tapestry Workshop is one of only a few tapestry workshops in the southern hemisphere.

Housed in a building in south suburban Melbourne historically associated with textiles and textile production, the workshop has gained a reputation over the years for the freshness, vitality and technical excellence of its handwoven tapestries, some of which feature a decidedly Australian aesthetic and approach to colour. With tapestries/cartoons designed by some of Australia’s and the world's pre-eminent artists, more than 500 mostly large-scale works have been hand-woven on the enormous high-warp looms in the light-flooded workshops in the former knitting mill in past decades.

“VTW/ATW is an enterprise that grew from the imagination of artists and enlightened community leaders to become the largest creator of public art in Australia and a focus for contemporary tapestry throughout the world,” writes Sue Walker, who was the founding Director of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop and its leader for 28 years.

Besides its commercial tapestry programme, Australian Tapestry Workshop also features a shop which sell supplies including a range of fine merino wool yarns in a total of 368 colours both in a small 25-gram “tester” size and on large cones. These yarns are specially formulated by the Australian Tapestry Workshop Colour Laboratory and dyed on site. ATW’s shop also sells tapestry frames, brass-tipped bobbins and at-home weaving kits. “ Orders are being packed daily and we ship worldwide,” the shop notes on its website. It also features a selection of tapestries for sale, ranging in price from 100 to 80,000 Australian dollars (62 euros to 50,000 euros) and beyond.

Australian Tapestry Workshop has a well-developed outreach programme featuring exhibitions and lectures as well as a renowned artist-in-residence programme open to Australian and international artists of varying disciplines. It has also created a number of tapestry prizes including the Kate Derum Award and a tapestry-for- architecture prize. All these activities anchor the Workshop in the Melbourne cultural scene as well as the national and international art scene.

Tapestry is taught in Australia through individual weavers, through university programmes in both Melbourne and Canberra and through the weaving and spinning guilds. There are always tapestries to be found in annual guild shows alongside other handwoven items and hand-spun yarns.

Outside the major cultural hubs of Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney, several regional local galleries regularly show tapestries and textile art, including Tamworth Regional Gallery in Tamworth in New South Wales and Ararat Gallery TAMA in Ararat in Victoria. TAMA stands for Textile Art Museum Australia. Established in 1968, the institution holds a unique place among Australia’s public galleries through its long-standing commitment to textile and fiber art. That curatorial and collection focus began in the early 1970s.

In the Sydney suburb of Concord, the New South Wales Embroiderers Guild’s Gallery 76 is a non-profit space dedicated to the needle arts. It is Sydney's only dedicated textile and fiber art gallery, showcasing the work of Australian and international artists through a dynamic programme of exhibitions and events. Opened in 2017 when the Guild transformed its century-old headquarters into a bright, contemporary space, the multi-storey facility includes galleries, workshop rooms, a historic collection and specialist textile art library comprising more than 5,500 books, pamphlets, newsletters, magazines, and study folios. Tapestry shows are included in the rota at the venue’s exhibition space. The shop stocks high-quality items sourced from small batch artisans as well as the artists exhibiting in the gallery. They range from unique handmade jewelry, ceramics and toys to homewares, beauty products and specialist needles, notions and threads.

I have much admired the work of Australian tapestry makers and tapestry movers-and-shakers including Valerie Kirk, Cresside Colette, Sarah Lindsay, Joy Smith and Tim Gresham, whose trajectory I still follow online from Germany. Tapestry artists in Australia are connected through informal artist networks, through Facebook and through the Australian Tapestry Network’s Facebook group.

I was fortunate enough to attend a retreat of tapestry weavers from New Zealand and Australia south of Sydney in 2018. This group holds regular retreats which include challenges where a theme is set and participants are asked to weave their take.

Two big tapestry highlights come to mind when I think of my six-year stay in Australia: The exhibition of The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries on loan from the Musée de Cluny in Paris at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2018 and the rare showing in 2019 of the original tapestry curtains designed by Australian abstract painter John Coburn for the Sydney Opera House. Used for some years after the landmark culture complex designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon was opened in 1973, the tapestry curtains (which were not woven in Australia, but at Ateliers Pinton/formerly Pinton Frères in Aubusson in France) were put into storage later due to practical concerns and conservation issues. The striking designs for two sets of stage draperies, Curtain of the Sun and Curtain of the Moon (1973) for two different theaters in the iconic complex have lost none of their freshness or stunning impact.

It is fascinating to note that both the Unicorn tapestries and the Sydney theater curtains were hidden away somewhere for many years and not cherished. This is a well-known textile art phenomenon that we have seen many times in the past. It was amazing to be able to see them for real and up close in all their monumentality, colour and detail.

The Sydney Opera House, whose striking white sails seems to float effortlessly into the sky, has a lot of concrete and strong structural framework lines indoors. The use of wooden elements and tapestry partially offsets the surprisingly stark interior (which some have blamed in part on Utzon having left the project before its completion over creative differences). “The tapestries reflect Utzon’s design intent for the interior of the Opera House, where he envisioned the use of modern art and vibrant colour to heighten audience members’ sense of anticipation as they took their seats,” the Opera House writes on its website. But the tapestry stage curtains are missing nowadays.

Alongside some Australian tapestry elsewhere in the complex, the Sydney Opera House seems especially proud of the Le Corbusier tapestry Les Dés sont Jetés orThe Die Is Cast (1960). Commissioned by Utzon, the tapestry is displayed in a plexiglass case, a nod to its commercial value and its significance as a key cultural artefact.

As crafts and textile work are enjoying a bit of a moment in popular culture, tapestries repeatedly pop up in group shows in key Australian art venues like The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. A commercial gallery, Annandale Galleries in suburban Sydney, memorably featured a series of large-scale tapestries based on designs by South African artist William Kentridge and woven by weavers from the Stephens Tapestry Studio in Johannesburg. I also regularly found tapestry and textile works at downtown galleries during the annual Sydney Biennale of art.

By thomas Cronenberg

ETF Steering Committee member Thomas Cronenberg lived in Australia for six years from 2016 to 2022. His report on tapestry Down Under follows.

Tapestry in Australia - Links and notes

https://www.austapestry.com.au/

https://www.austapestry.com.au/shop

https://www.austapestry.com.au/shop/yarns

https://www.austapestry.com.au/shop/products/weavingsupplies

https://www.embroiderersguildnsw.org.au/Gallery76

https://tamworthregionalgallery.com.au/

https://araratgallerytama.com.au/

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/theladyandtheunicorn/item/th5xw8/?p=2

https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/art-at-the-house/tapestries