https://www.austapestry.com.au
ATW Visit: A moment for reflection
Canadian Tapestry Network (CTN) readers know the history and on-going excellence of the ATW, or can read about it at https://www.austapestry.com.
A Passion for Tapestry exhibited small-scale tapestries from the collection of ATW supporter Tuppy Cole. The pieces were mostly artist designed and weaver interpreter woven. They ranged from the gradated blue subtlety of a ceramist's slip designs to a sparkling cup of ice tea to a poetic 2-warp black exclamation mark ending in a red dot. The collaboration of artist, weaver interpreter and dyer flows consistently through the Workshop (please read more about this at the ATW Web site).
Mondays are closed to the public so the staff and volunteers have space to reconcile, brainstorm, plan and meet with clients. As a not-for-profit organization, the planning and strategizing takes special effort by the directors, volunteers and staff. Everyone is responsible in their unique way for being attentive to commission opportunities, funding sources, on-going projects and programs and the well-being of one-another.
The tapestry weaver interpreters at the ATW have decades of experience.
Their approach to preparing for and developing their large-scale
tapestries is evidenced by the wheeled project boards around the main
studio hall. In addition to the project boards, there were smaller looms
for samples of colour gradations and technical fragments of the
large-scale projects. The Workshop dye studio is actively involved with
creating for the needs of the projects.
~ Yolanda Olivotto
Visiting the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW) in Melbourne January 21, 2019
was impromptu and somewhat unsequential for the staff's usual Monday
morning routine. Although closed to the public Mondays, the staff
arranged ahead so I could visit, as I was in Melbourne briefly until
early Tuesday morning. Sophia greeted me and explained the layout of the
workshop and galleries. One gallery was being prepared for the upcoming
exhibit of work by the ATW's 2018 Artists in Residence program, AIR2018, and the other gallery was in the final week of A Passion for Tapestry: Small Tapestries from a Private Collection. As a gift, I gave the Workshop a copy of the exhibition catalogue from the show Vamp to Visage,
a Tapestry Weavers of Vancouver Island (TAPIS) project in which
small-scale tapestries of feet were paired in a responsive way with
heads, woven by pairs of TAPIS members (one weaver wove either feet or a
head, and the other responded, head to feet, and feet to head). The ATW
is in the process of assembling a library, so the catalogue seemed to
be an apropos gift, especially due to the collaborative nature of the Vamp to Visage works, first exhibited in 2003.
Canadian Tapestry Network (CTN) readers know the history and on-going excellence of the ATW, or can read about it at https://www.austapestry.com.
A Passion for Tapestry exhibited small-scale tapestries from the collection of ATW supporter Tuppy Cole. The pieces were mostly artist designed and weaver interpreter woven. They ranged from the gradated blue subtlety of a ceramist's slip designs to a sparkling cup of ice tea to a poetic 2-warp black exclamation mark ending in a red dot. The collaboration of artist, weaver interpreter and dyer flows consistently through the Workshop (please read more about this at the ATW Web site).
Mondays are closed to the public so the staff and volunteers have space to reconcile, brainstorm, plan and meet with clients. As a not-for-profit organization, the planning and strategizing takes special effort by the directors, volunteers and staff. Everyone is responsible in their unique way for being attentive to commission opportunities, funding sources, on-going projects and programs and the well-being of one-another.
There
were two large-scale, front weave, bottom to top tapestries on vertical
looms. One project was a portrait commissioned in late 2018 to
commemorate the retiring senior partner of a Melbourne law firm. The
other project was a weaving of the winning design by Justin Hill for the
2016 Tapestry Design Prize for Architects, a program developed to
nurture the long-standing relationship between architectural spaces and
tapestry design, weaving and display.
http://www.
The ATW weaver interpreters are masterful at using the tapestry medium to make a design "weaverly" (Archie Brennan, 1989 workshop). On one of the small sample looms was the spectacled eye of the senior partner. His eyebrow was enlivened with weft floats, and subtle gradations of colour. A sample of his lace collar lay on a work table with a scale of flesh colours. A palette of spools of colour were readily available to mix onto the Workshop's signature brass-tip bobbins.
The 22 Temenggon Road, Twilight design by Architect Justin Hill
was woven by ATW weaver interns Karlie Hawking, Leith Maguire and Sophie
Morris under the supervision of Sue Batten, Chris Cochius, Pamela Joyce and Cheryl Thornton. It's
cutting off ceremony was Friday, January 25th, 2019. The Workshop
members seemed thrilled at accomplishing another successful
collaborative work.
The roles of artist and weaver interpreter that are sometimes a dichotomous, personal, internal challenge for an artist weaver are celebratory amongst the ATW team and including the ATW dyer. CTN weavers will likely have participated in many ways with tapestry, from the autonomy of working alone to the community building experience of a community tapestry project, whether artist designed and community woven or community created and artist curated or assembled. CTN members know the reflection and mindfulness required to sift through their process as artist weaver and many know the outcomes of a collaboration. There are numerous CTN member collaborative experiences currently underway and that have occurred in the past, and I look forward to reading more about, revisiting and seeing these, and to working through more personal tapestry explorations.
As I was leaving the ATW, I purchased wool dyed by the Workshop, and a
child's beginner weaving kit (similar to the one I purchased in Kuala
Lumpur in November 2018). I have been incorporating the ATW wool into a
25cm square piece I am weaving during my 3-month Australia & New
Zealand wildlife camping tour. The visit to the ATW has further inspired
me to get out and explore, get busy with more tapestry connections,
weave and introduce more youngsters to tapestry weaving, as other CTN
members do. I remember feeling in 1990 that I needed to engage with
tapestry every day. Being immersed for those few short hours at the ATW
amongst and with evidence of those who are immersed with tapestry daily
has brought that sense back for me.
http://www.
The ATW weaver interpreters are masterful at using the tapestry medium to make a design "weaverly" (Archie Brennan, 1989 workshop). On one of the small sample looms was the spectacled eye of the senior partner. His eyebrow was enlivened with weft floats, and subtle gradations of colour. A sample of his lace collar lay on a work table with a scale of flesh colours. A palette of spools of colour were readily available to mix onto the Workshop's signature brass-tip bobbins.
The roles of artist and weaver interpreter that are sometimes a dichotomous, personal, internal challenge for an artist weaver are celebratory amongst the ATW team and including the ATW dyer. CTN weavers will likely have participated in many ways with tapestry, from the autonomy of working alone to the community building experience of a community tapestry project, whether artist designed and community woven or community created and artist curated or assembled. CTN members know the reflection and mindfulness required to sift through their process as artist weaver and many know the outcomes of a collaboration. There are numerous CTN member collaborative experiences currently underway and that have occurred in the past, and I look forward to reading more about, revisiting and seeing these, and to working through more personal tapestry explorations.
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