Weaving - The Australian Way October 2012 - Qantas

talkabout weaving
The weavers’ tales
all photography: viki petherbridge
Detail from tapestry
work in progress inspired
by Ngayuku Ngura
(This Is My Country) by
Nyankulya Watson, 2009
Behind a
heritage facade in South
Melbourne, craftspeople are
reinterpreting original art works of
significance by local and Indigenous
artists in elaborate tapestry form,
many destined to adorn Australian
embassies around the world.
words caroline baum
october 2012 QANTAS 143

Tapestry inspired by Untitled, by David Noonan, 2012
Apart from Homer’s Penelope, who famously
wove then secretly unpicked her tapestry while fending off suitors
in her husband Odysseus’ absence, it’s hard to think of any other
well-known tapestry weavers. Theirs is a quiet, anonymous art. So
you could be forgiven for failing to notice the discreet name change
of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. Thirty six years after Dame
Elisabeth Murdoch and Lady Delacombe, wife of the then governor
of Victoria, founded this unique workshop where weavers interpret
the work of the country’s best contemporary artists, the enterprise
has gone national. It’s now the Australian Tapestry Workshop –
which is only logical, as it collaborates with artists from around the
country and flies the flag both nationally and internationally.
One initiative has weavers interpreting Indigenous paintings to
exhibit in Australian embassies. Their pieces are in Paris, Beijing,
Washington DC, Tokyo, New Delhi, Dublin and the Vatican City.
Kunawarritji To Wajaparni hangs in the chancery of the Australian
embassy to the Holy See, the central governing body of the
Catholic Church in Rome. Based on a collaborative painting by eight
men from the same family group in Canning Stock Route country
in Western Australia, it took five weavers six months to complete.
“All this – from that line to this line – are all our family trees, where
our mob used to go from one waterhole to another, all as one people,”
explained one of the Indigenous artists when he visited the workshop
to see how the tapestry was progressing.
Another work, Nyankulya Watson’s Ngayuku Ngura (This Is My
Country) took four weavers 1750 hours to complete, with its incandescent
palette of orange, yellow, magenta and red dots depicting
the waterholes and tracks of her country in remote Western
Australia. “Sometimes when they finish a work like this the weavers
say, ‘No more dots’,” says workshop director Antonia Syme.
october 2012 QANTAS 145

Tapestry inspired by
Ngarrgooroon, Patrick
Mung Mung, 2010 (left);
Kunawarritji To Wajaparni
(detail and complete, below)
A senior Pitjantjatjara woman, Watson now lives and paints in
South Australia, and the tapestry inspired by her work hangs in the
Australian embassy in Rome – its launch was attended by such
luminaries as Paolo Zegna, chairman of the Italian menswear
dynasty and a major fan of Australian merino wool.
Ngarrgooroon, a painting by Patrick Mung Mung, has an earthy
palette of ochres and an unusual dusky pink, made from crushed
rock taken from a nearby diamond mine. Following blasting and
drilling, the company supplies the material to the Warmun Art
Centre at Turkey Creek in the East Kimberley of WA. Mung Mung
says that local artists feel the resulting paintings are a way of reclaiming
their territory. The reinterpreted tapestry of Ngarrgooroon
currently hangs in the Australian embassy in Dublin.
Behind the heritage-listed, 1885 facade of the Australian Tapestry
Workshop’s South Melbourne premises, there is a light-filled sense
of purpose as state-of-the-art technology is literally woven with
traditional practice. The dyeing lab is the nerve centre for producing
the 370 wool and 200 cotton colours that make up the weavers’
palette. In a timely response to the resurgent popularity of weaving
and embroidery, the public can now purchase yarns from the workshop’s
retail area, which also exhibits a selection of pieces for sale
with a starting price of about $1300.
Syme is particularly proud that the superb fade-resistant yarns
are created from Australian fibre that has been farmed sustainably
and ethically. “That means no mulesing.”
Brass-tipped wooden bobbins made from recycled timber hang
like limp puppets from works in progress on eight mobile upright
looms. None currently occupies the biggest frame, which is nearly
eight metres long and held the monumental Arthur Boyd Shoalhaven
landscape tapestry, created in 1988 for the Great Hall in
october 2012 QANTAS 147

Tapestry inspired
by Fire And Water
– Moths, Swamps
And Lava Flows Of
The Hamilton
Region by John
Wolseley, 2010
Parliament House. That tapestry is the workshop’s biggest project
– it took 22 weavers to create it (the workshop has a permanent core
group of four weavers, with others being brought in for large
commissions). There is a collective sense of excitement as a piece
nears completion. “It is hard to let them go,” says Syme, “because
we’ve lived with them, often for very long periods of time.”
While most works are interpretations of paintings, increasingly
the workshop is collaborating with other media. Photography and
digital images have presented weavers with new challenges.
David Noonan’s Untitled (2012) looks like a transposed photograph,
but it is in fact a digital file that weavers first printed onto
photographic paper to create a pattern, or cartoon, to work from. Its
complex, layered imagery and subtle black, white and grey tones
give it an enigmatic quality, which the tapestry has captured.
Another work that presented special challenges, with its black
background and close-up details of skin, strands of hair and delicate
bodice beading, is the striking Alice Bayke by New Zealander
Yvonne Todd. Inspired by imagery of Priscilla Presley and Loretta
Lynn, the photographic portrait has a gothic, dramatic intensity
thanks to its exaggerated features. It took two weavers more than
1700 hours to complete the tapestry, which was commissioned by
the Queensland Art Gallery.
Other works are destined for corporate clients. Past commissions
have included works for Deutsche Bank (a snake and apple design
for the new Sydney HQ by local artist
Nell), The Royal Women’s Hospital in
Melbourne (a large work by Sally
Smart) and the Sydney Opera House
(an abstract tribute to Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach created by Jørn Utzon
as part of the building’s redevelopment
in 2000). More recently, there
have been commissions for the
Australian Tapestry
Workshop, 262-266 Park
Street, South Melbourne.
www.austapestry.com.au
Workshop open Mon-Fri
9am-5pm. Guided tours
available by appointment on
Wed & Thu, (03) 9699 7885.
Special open day Nov 17.
National Library in Canberra (designed by John Young) and the
State Library of Victoria (by Indigenous artist Ben McKeown).
Currently, weavers are interpreting North Facing, a painting on
tile by ceramicist Bern Emmerichs destined for the foyer of the
Northern Hospital in Epping, Victoria – appropriately close to where
the artist grew up. Also in progress is Concerning The Wading Birds
Of The Warrnambool Wetlands, a new work by John Wolseley, whose
complex paintings of the Australian bush and its flora and fauna
have been special favourites in the workshop. The challenge in this
work, which will grace the walls of Victoria’s Warrnambool Base
Hospital, is to capture the extraordinary transparent effect Wolseley
creates with watercolours.
The larger tapestries produced by the workshop often have a
thicker texture, thanks to the technique of weaving at a coarse warp
setting (the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns held in tension on
the loom). “We like the look because it’s very recognisably woven,”
says production manager Sara Lindsay. “A traditional tapestry house,
like the historic Gobelins in Paris, weaves more finely, but they don’t
have the commercial considerations we do. If we wove like that it
would be completely unaffordable. It’s also an aesthetic consideration.
We want you to see the surface is not smooth – it has a sawtooth
edge we call a step. We think it makes our pieces more vigorous.”
The workshop continues to look for new collaborators. “We work
with upcoming as well as established names,” says Syme, of the
workshop’s artist-in-residence scheme that attracts diverse practitioners
such as collage artists and printmakers. The workshop is also
planning to run two community-centric programs. One will explore
weaving as a therapeutic activity for hospital patients; the other will
work with members of Melbourne’s Afghan and Burmese refugee
communities, sharing skills and techniques.
Anyone who fancies seeing elaborate tapestries in progress, and
meeting the talented craftspeople who make them, is most welcome
to visit the workshop – even if their name isn’t Penelope. c
148 QANTAS october 2012