The Australian Tapestry Workshop
is one of a handful of its kind
worldwide, and the only one in
Australia. For the past 50 years,
it has ensured this rare decorative
art form continues to flourish
—by Carli Philips.
As traditional craft begins to fade under the pressure of 3D printing, high tech and automation, the importance of preserving rare specialist skills has become increasingly vital. While the centuries old decorative art of tapestry may have many admirers, it has increasingly fewer artisans, further cementing it as one of the most precious artforms.
This year the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW), turns 50. Little-known outside the art world yet internationally respected within it, the South Melbourne workshop, gallery, bespoke dye lab and artist-in-residence space has brought together Australian and international artists and master weavers to create pieces held by leading cultural institutions, civic buildings, embassies and private collections nationally and abroad.
The ATW’s small team of artisans still hand-produce tapestries using the Gobelin technique—a vertical loom method invented in 17th-century France that allows for painterly detail and subtle colour gradations. With no Australian tertiary institution formally teaching weaving, the responsibility for nurturing the next generation of weavers and dyers falls entirely to the ATW—a challenge the workshop is meeting by building apprenticeship and internship pathways. “We have weavers on staff who have been working here for 40 years,” says co-director and CEO Catherine Jones. “It’s an incredibly specialised technique that is important to keep alive.”
It is a mission worth fighting for, as these five masterworks selected by Jones as among the workshop’s most significant commissions demonstrate.
‘WELCOME TO COUNTRY—
NOW YOU SEE ME:
SEEING THE INVISIBLE’
Maree Clarke and Mitch
Mahoney, 2025
The ATW’s latest commission took
a team of 12 weavers over a year to
bring to life. Weighing over 135kg,
the artwork hangs in a void over two
levels in the foyer of Victoria’s new
Footscray Hospital. Suspended above
an ellipse installation, the design by
First Nations artists Maree Clarke and
Mitch Mahoney was influenced by
microscopic images of river reeds
from the nearby Maribyrnong River
and skeletal drawings of local native
flora and fauna.
Spanning 42sqm, it’s the ATW’s largest
ever handwoven, three-dimensional
tapestry. “Given the [hospital setting],
this had to be a really joyous work,”
says Jones. “And it has achieved that
in spades, especially when it comes to
the colours.”
‘LIFE BURST’
John Olsen AO OBE, 2016
One of Australia’s most beloved artists, the late John Olsen (1928–2023) created the design for this wondrous 5m-wide piece for Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2016, where it remains on permanent display. Designed to echo the architectural rhythms of the atrium in which it has been installed, the work glows in hues of yellow and fiery red, with sculptural tendrils of orange woven across its surface.
At the time Olsen’s ninth commission from the ATW, the artist described the piece as an expression of “optimism and progress”, featuring a sun-like motif synonymous with his body of work. New bespoke shades were created by the ATW’s on-site dye lab, and to achieve the tapestry’s lustrous effect, weavers incorporated a soumak technique (a decorative wrapping
method that creates raised, textured patterns in silk thread, giving it lightness and transparency.
‘LONGING (CAMILLA)’
Troy Emery and COX
Architecture, 2025
Winner of the 2025 Tapestry Design
Prize, this intricate work demanded
275 hours from weavers, deploying
6km of wool in 27 different colours,
sourced from Australian farms and
dyed on-site at the ATW.
The annual prize, celebrating textile art
and architecture, is displayed in Robin
Boyd’s iconic Walsh Street house
(1957). Emery and COX Architecture
positioned the amorphous piece in
the living room, where it channels the
Boyd family’s former cat, Camilla.
Defying convention, the collaboration
reinterprets tapestry in an entirely new
form. “[This work is] an extraordinary
collaboration between innovation and
tradition,” says Jones. “It exemplifies
the collision of craftsmanship and the
digital era, and the reconnection of
contemporary design with the tactile
and human qualities of the handmade.”
‘GREAT HALL TAPESTRY’
Arthur Boyd, 1988
Hanging in Canberra’s Parliament House, this hypnotic and uniquely Australian piece by Arthur Boyd (1920–1999) was designed to cover almost the entire south wall of the building’s Great Hall.
Drawing on the surrounding environment and the view from Boyd’s rural retreat and studio at Bundanon on the South Coast of New South Wales, the work is an ode to the Australian bush landscape, its life-like proportions of trees designed to cultivate a sensory experience akin to being enveloped in a forest.
‘PARRAMATTA’
Chris Kenyon, 2021
Hanging in the lobby of a commercial
tower in Western Sydney’s major urban
renewal precinct, 6 Parramatta Square,
this monumental tapestry translates an
original painting by New South Wales based impressionist landscape artist
Chris Kenyon at 10 times the scale.
Given the resulting level of high
abstraction, the translation allowed for
creative licence. To interpret Kenyon’s
viewpoint—a vantage from the water
to the river shoreline—a 13-person
team of weavers navigated the sense
of depth between the foreground and
the rich colours of the Blue Mountains
beyond. Over 18 months, Kenyon’s
vision came to life, with luminous
yellow and what Jones describes as
“golden freshness” blending from the
water to the woodlands. Spanning two looms and measuring 11.5m wide and 7m high, it ranks among the ATW’s most technically demanding commissions.
A close look reveals astonishing detail: the rough texture of bark and the watchful presence of cockatoos root the work firmly in the natural world.
At the time of completion, it was the second-largest tapestry in the world, soaring 9m high and spanning 20m in width.
The two-year collaboration between Boyd and 13 weavers resulted in a work that is both a testament to their combined technical mastery and, three decades on, an emblem of the ATW’s enduring commitment to an art form that refuses to fade.