Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Fine Art of Tapestry Weaving
Sara Lindsay Gallery View
Archie Brenann
Susan Martin-Maffei Sports Series- Basketball Court
Intersect
Imprint Impact
Unpacking Land Exhibition Tapestries
The ever efficient Amy Kerr unpacking and labeling tapestries for the Land exhibtion. Thank you Amy!
From Susan Hart Henegar
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008
Valerie thank you for the excellent coverage, sites, photos, etc. forthose of us who did not travel for the symposium. It's been outstanding and makes me feel part of the event.
Susan Hart Henegar
Tapestries & Custom Textiles
California fibers
FORMS IN WOOD AND FIBER Exhibition
Valerie thank you for the excellent coverage, sites, photos, etc. forthose of us who did not travel for the symposium. It's been outstanding and makes me feel part of the event.
Susan Hart Henegar
Tapestries & Custom Textiles
California fibers
FORMS IN WOOD AND FIBER Exhibition
Speakers Abstracts
FRIDAY 2 MAY
ANNIKA EKDAHL 9.10-10.00
Road Movie (Verdure): Visiting Mom
Annika Ekdahl was born and lives in Sweden. She has a Master of Fine Art from the University of Gothenburg, Department of Craft and Design and at http://annikaekdahl.se/eye.php you can read a long list of exhibitions and commissions demonstrating her commitment and achievements. The Swedish Arts Grants Committee has recognised her work by giving her a grant for FOR FIVE YEARS!!! (And after that she can apply for another five years. See www.konstnarsnamnden.se.)
My idea is to talk about the historical verdure tapestries along with my personal struggle to create a contemporary one. I will connect to the Tapestry 2008 theme LAND, since it connects beautifully to the very soul of verdure tapestries.
There is a book on one of the ANU library book-shelves describing a suit of Belgian tapestries, hanging in Poland. I have the same book. I found it in a second-hand bookshop in Poland 10 years ago. I love that book! I’ve spent hours studying the illustrations, those marvelous masterpieces from the 16th and 17th centuries. I fell in love with these tapestries, especially the red mille-fleur ones, with gods and angels and devils and knights on horses and dressed up ladies with garlands of flowers in their hair. My own tapestry “The Baroque Party”, from 2000 was very influenced by these woven stories.
There is another group of tapestries in the textile art history – also featured in my book, in our book. In Europe they are usually called verdures. These verdures have never really interested me – I found them more like decorative backgrounds with no particular story to tell. So, when I showed a tapestry of mine called “The Theatre in the Park” to a writer who visited my house, and when she exclaimed: “oh I see, you are into verdures now”. I denied it at first. But of course she was right. I had made a verdure with vegetation, animals, birds and ornaments, people in funny costumes.
My Mother died 5 years ago. My brother and I decided to spread her ashes in a small town up north in Sweden, where she grow up. I live in the south, 1000 km from this town. So, last summer I decided to fill our car with all necessary things for one weeks survival on the road up north through the beautiful Swedish landcsape, visiting childhood spots and new and undiscovered places. Exploring my motherland and visiting my Mother. And at the same time designing a tapestry based on this trip. Like a woven road movie. With vegetation, flowers, animals. In fact a verdure. It’s in progress now on my loom and I’ve decided to give it this title: ”Road Movie (Verdure): Visiting Mom”.
FIONA RUTHERFORD 10.00-10.30
Issey Miyake and Tapestry
Fiona Rutherford lives and works in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England and she is a tapestry weaver who has travelled and exhibited her work in Japan since her first visit in 2001. In this talk she will discuss how Japanese clothing, both traditional and contemporary, have been an important source of inspiration for her tapestry designs. It is how cloth from one culture informs the making of another.
Patterns, symbols and mark making combined in a vivid colour palate are central to Fiona’s tapestries. She will illustrate how the layers of colour and pattern found in the kimono became a source of inspiration not only for her visual imagery but also in redefining her tapestries as more sculptural work that could be deconstructed into selvedges and fragments that suggested a bigger canvas.
In particular she will focus on the influence of the Japanese designer Issey Miyake who fuses traditional and contemporary thinking in his sculptural approach to textiles. She will discuss the impact of seeing his work in “The Radical Fashion” exhibition at the V & A in London at the same time she was researching the museum’s kimono collection and how this sparked a process of change where East met West in a new body of work.
DIANA WOOD CONROY 11.00 – 11.30
Tapestry as tesserae and fresco: the hidden weaves of Late Roman antiquity
Diana Wood Conroy has a BA (Hons) in Archaeology from the University of Sydney and Doctor of Creative Arts degree from the University of Wollongong. A tapestry weaver since the 1970s, she has continued her research interests in archaeology and visual cultures. A member of the University of Sydney Paphos Theatre Excavation team since 1996, she has researched the Roman wall paintings found in the theatre and in near-by tombs. She received the Distinguished Research Award from the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools in 2005 for the breadth of her contributions across the disciplines of art and archaeology. Her exhibition work explores relationships between classical, Aboriginal and personal worlds in tapestry and drawing, and is held in national and international collections. An archaeological approach informs her critical writing on textiles and tapestry. She is Professor of Visual Arts, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong.
What survives of the organic materials of textiles in the Roman world of Mediterranean archaeology is a partial and tantalising glimpse of the richness of figurative, woven textiles. By studying the variety and intricacy of surviving 'carpet' mosaics and 'tapestry' frescoes from Roman houses, public buildings and Early Christian basilicas we can reconstruct not only the vivid colour and composition of textiles but also see the primacy of textile imagery in classical representation.The paper explores materials discovered in recent archaeological excavations in Paphos, Cyprus, in the Greco-Roman theatre and nearby tombs and houses. Diana Wood Conroy investigates the fragmentary mosaics and wall-paintings that have emerged during her ten years with the University of Sydney Paphos Theatre Excavation, and shows how the 'haptic', tactile qualities of legendary classical textiles, now lost, are translated into the related textures of mosaic tesserae and painted plaster. NANCY ARTHUR HOSKINS 11.30 – 12.00
Tut to Tiraz: Tracing the Tapestries of Egypt (Pharaonic, Coptic, And Early Islamic Fabrics)
Nancy Arthur Hoskins is a weaver and the world authority on Coptic textiles having researched them in museums internationally. She has presented seminars with museum collections at the Textile Museum, Washington D.C., The Cincinnati Museum of Art, The Denver Museum of Art, Le Musée du Périgord, Périgueux, France, The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and with her personal collection. Three thousand years of fabulous Pharaonic, Coptic, and Early Islamic Egyptian fabrics from my research in over fifty museums around the world are shared with woven recreations and over twenty actual ancient fragments from my personal collection. This was a time when weaving techniques and technology went from plain tabby to tapestry, taqueté, and tiraz; themes changed from Classical to Christian, to Islamic calligraphy; and wool, silk, and cotton were introduced to the linen weavers of old Egypt. This lecture reviews the development of textile style, structure, and technology at the time in history when conquest and caravans transferred materials and knowledge from West to East and East to West.
SUSAN MARTIN MAFFEI 12.00-12.30
Pre-Columbian(Andean) Tapestry and Its Relevance to 20th Century Painting
Susan Martin Maffei has been weaving tapestry professionally since 1985. Her background includes training at Les Gobelins in Paris and apprenticeship and studio work at Scheuer Tapestry Studio in NYC. She has taught and exhibited in the U.S. and abroad and has work in both public and private collections.
G. W. BOT 1.30 – 2.00
The making of 'Glyphs' at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop'
G.W. BOT works as a printmaker, painter and sculptor in Canberra. She was born in Pakistan of Australian parents and studied art in London Paris and Australia. Since 1985 she has worked as a full time artist
In 2005 the Victorian Tapestry Workshop invited me to collaborate with them on the production of the large tapestry 'Glyphs' which measures 90 x 397 cm.
Essentially I want to explore in my paper the affinity in the creative process between working as a printmaker and working as a tapestry artist. Many years ago I was inspired by the 'Lady and the
Unicorn' tapestries whilst working at the Cluny Museum in Paris. This eventually grew into my linocut cycle of 1996 titled 'The lady and the poet'. Problems of interweaving of imagery, real and
simulated cloth designs and textures and rich intertextuality were all considerations in that series .
About a decade later I developed my series of 'Glyphs' envisaged as linocuts , which built on the experience of 'The lady and poet' series and set out to devise a complex language for the Australian
bush. The realisation of one of my prints from this series as a tapestry in some way saw the process of the tapestry into print and the print into tapestry run a complete circle. The paper will explore
some of these parallels and synergies.
NELL 2.00 – 2.30
The making of "Let me put my love into you" at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop”
Nell is an emerging Sydney artist forging a career in a range of mediums. She was commissioned to design a major tapestry, which was woven by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, described on a blog as “her sexy snake and apple”.
SUE LAWTY 3.00 – 4.00
Embedded and Released
Landscape is Sue Lawty’s main inspiration, working from direct experience walking, climbing collecting materials. She has researched tapestry and textiles extensively and her work provides a critical link in the chain that connects the historic with the contemporary, the traditional with the innovative. Lawty has collaborated on a significant new body of work with the V&A Textile Collection: the result includes two site specific wall installations and a blog: suelawty.com/
Running over the high moors: primal, fundamental contact with air, wind, rain, mist, sun, warm, cold, ground… so good to be out of the studio. Textile history is writ large on this land. The emergence and growth of textiles and my attraction to live and work here are both as a direct result of the Pennine landscape. Dramatic, steep hills and deep valleys shaped the wool industry and, in turn, have been shaped by it. Here are high fields full of sheep and an abundance of soft water for washing and power. Since the Middle Ages, rows of narrow, stone mullioned ‘weavers’ windows (built into the cottages to allow more light into the dark interiors) attest to the endeavour of the hundreds of individuals who carved a living from their handlooms. The Piece Hall where once they took their pieces of cloth to be sold to merchants is, today, an art gallery.
I grew up under the impression that the large medieval tapestries, so familiar in the stately homes of Derbyshire, were quintessentially English. (Context has a lot to answer for.) Large expanses of bluish battle or hunting scenes seemed synonymous with these grand houses. Hardwick Hall, just a stone’s throw from my house as a child, has many fine examples. Then, as now, I was rather put off by the subject matter, choosing instead to home in on the exquisite detail. I later learned that these were probably woven in Arras or Tournai. However insular our personal history, our choices are contextualised by world history.
Throughout my creative life I have been drawn to textiles from times past, re-examining structure and exploring textile language. In our present technological age, it feels important that the past should inform the present and that the human mark of the individual should be evident.
I no longer feel so obsessive about tapestry per se. In recent work I use natural elements from the land - tiny found stones – to explore repetition and language of mark. I am interested in structure, rhythm, repetition and paring away excess. Rock has always informed my work – I am grounded by it. It is fundamental to my thinking and understanding. In developing my creative language, I also feel grounded but no longer bound by textile heritage and tradition.
CLIO PADOVANI and DR JESSICA HEMMINGS 4.00 – 5.00
Clio Padovani was born in Florence, Italy and received her BA degree in Tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art and her MA at the Royal College of Art in 1989. Since then she has continued to develop tapestry as an expressive art medium, participating in numerous international exhibitions. She works as a Senior Lecturer at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. Clio Padovani has sent a film as her presentation.
Dr Jessica Hemmings is Programme Leader Textiles, Fashion & Fibre, Winchester School of Art, GB.
Clio Padovani: Constructed Time: Weaving And Video As Temporal Collages
In this presentation she explores video in relation to tapestry so as to promote an understanding of how a montage of threads of narrative can induce unexpected and compelling experiences: occasions that suggest temporal dis-junctures that are like involuntary memory.
Iterative processes, such as weaving and video, work with the constant of time: the real and imaginary threads which materially construct a tapestry work against the loss of the moment, each thread of weft accumulating to assert a physical presence (and present) of permanence.
Moving images give none of these assurances, as the medium recursively produces, in common with the vanishing, ungraspable images of memory, a series of endlessly transforming moments. Video records the movement of disappearance and transformation. I suggest this is the paradox of video: as the weaving of the thread temporarily suspends time and makes the present stable, so moving images, which record loss, offer the possibility of restoring the moment. This redemptive temporality enables the instance, infiltrated by narratives of memory and history, to co-exist with, and alter, the present-ness experienced by the viewing subject.
Dr Jessica Hemmings: Memory, Landscape and Time: Contemporary Written and Woven Narratives
“As an imaginative writer I find myself reading in continuously changing ways,” explains the postcolonial author Wilson Harris. “I reread works by writers I may have misjudged and which I return to and perceive differently. I reread my own fictions after a long while and see connections there I planted and yet which seem utterly new.” This paper proposes a ‘rereading’ of contemporary tapestry from two perspectives: the narration of memory and landscape as articulated in the tapestries of Sue Lawty, Clio Padovani and Shelly Goldsmith and the metaphor of tapestry used to express memory and landscape which plays a central role in Harris’ novel The Carnival Trilogy.
This research is, in part, a response to Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s warning in Women’s Work of the interpretative mistakes generations can make if the separation between the use and the creation of textiles grows too great. Barber suggests our common understanding that Homer’s Penelope wove a plain funerary cloth by day and unpicked it by night to stall her suitors is based on a collective ignorance and distance from the pace of weaving. “Homer’s audience,” Barber argues when she suggests that we have long misunderstood the fabric Penelope wove, “would have know that only the weaving of a non-repetitious pattern such as a story is so very time-consuming, but we who no longer weave or regularly watch others weave are more easily misled.”
“There is always a discrepancy,” Harris’s contemporary reincarnation of Penelope concludes, “and as a consequence I unravel the work I have done, unstitch everything, and start all over again from the very beginning whenever that was… [it] never quite fits. Always a sleeve of element or a fluid stitch that’s out of joint.” Reading fiction’s metaphor of tapestry against contemporary tapestry practice, this research attempts to repair the longstanding material misreading of Homer through the reconsideration of the narratives of tapestry in twenty-first century fiction and textile art. A comparative reading both acknowledges the threat of interpretative mistakes possible when distanced from making (Barber) but also celebrates the possibility of a nonlinear, dynamic narrative possible when rereading the seemingly familiar (Harris).
EXHIBITIONS RECEPTION, SCHOOL OF ART GALLERY, 6PM – All Welcome
MC: Gordon Bull, Head of School of Art
Speakers: Eve Thwaites
Mrs Kommaly Chanthavong
Wendy Teakel
Kay Lawrence
INFORMAL DINNER after reception at MEKONG DELTA – limited to 60 people
Christine Pearson from ACTIVE TRAVEL has arranged an option for dinner at the ASIAN MEKONG DELTA KITCHEN restaurant, Shop 18 Marcus Clarke St, Corner of Alinga and Marcus Clarke, a short walk from the Art School. The meal will be very traditional LAO food.Inclusive Price $25 (including corkage - BYO) Pre Paid as numbers limited to 60 persons. Christine will take bookings with payment at registration from 8am on Friday 2 May, outside the Lecture Theatre, School of Art. For people who do not like Lao food, want to wonder off with a small group of friends or if we reach 60 bookings and have to make a cut-off, there are lots of other restaurants nearby in WEST ROW or the city centre and bookings would not be required.
SATURDAY 3 MAY
AINO KAJANIEMI 9.10 – 10.00
Subjects from the innermost heart – a personal account of work
Aino Kajaniemi studied at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland and has held 21 solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows since 1984. She has woven liturgical church textiles, has work in major collections including Helsinki Art Museum, Intelcom SA, Switzeland and State of Finland
“Textiles bring us memories through the skin; they can bring happiness, by touching materials one can live the past into reality. In this way my textiles become intimate. I have not yet found my limit, there is still something to search for and find. In this way I want to weave my works out into the world. “ Telos Art Textiles of the World Scandinavia.
BRENDA GOGGS – 10.00 – 10.30
Tapestry weaving - a slow, self-absorbed, personal, space
Brenda Goggs is a tapestry weaver living in Canberra, ACT Australia. She designs and weaves her own tapestry designs in modern wall hangings. Her work as a weaver focuses on ideas related to the Australian land and landscape and our place in it.
When tapestry weaving is such a slow, self-absorbed, personal, space, what is the point of this process in a world full of trouble, where there is no possibility to rewind or reverse one’s process?
ANDRZEJ BANACHOWICZ – 11.00 – 11.20
“Tapestries and objects – my creation or Mystery of time and man”
Andrzej Banachowicz was born in Poland and gained a Master of Arts Diploma with distinction in Sculpture and Exhibition Design. Since 1992 he has been head of the Fiber Arts Studio 11 in Poznan, Poland. He has participated in many individual and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
My creation combines many conventionalities, symbols and art signs are compound. Man’s symbolic figure appears as sign in my tapestries, revealing vision of man and his ultimate road. I bring new worlds into being with this man holding pillow under his armpit, I evoke these already passed away, I find sensations impossible to put into words. I create illusion revealing new reality. That is why I am always impressed by Waldemar Łysiak’s book “Asphalt saloon”: “ Do we know everything concerning ourselves, do we remember what happened during last month? We’ve been rushing to swallow continent …. I do not know what’s your talisman brought from your voyage. I brought this small pillow made by Modern Pillow Company; I have slept on it in my car. It’s difficult to believe what’s the capacity of such small pillow. Few sanctuaries, many towns and settlements, forts and houses, rivers, forests and casinos, Disneyland and Hollywood, prison in Yuma, El Alamo, Elvis’s death, gunmen and black people, the biggest sculpture in the world, and small bookshop in New Orleans. Sometimes I fell asleep on this pillow, being very calm, feeling like pilgrim who went to Mecca and paid his dept to Allah. This pillow stuffed with memories will remind me after many years that I was young once. One is young once. Having such pillows just once is fine.
This chapter “Modern Pillow Co. pillow” became a beautiful example of timeless penetration of meanings and arts. Textile is also of my interests because of the meaning transfer ability it shares moods, emotions. The complete transfer of initial appointment – such total vision of life, voyage into mystery, hidden by the man with the pillow. This man with pillow image placed in labyrinths, open and closed spaces reaches deeply to subconscious place archetype, leading through borders of real world to the eternal mystery of another existence. I think that any of my works reveal the identity of the person. Imagination is encouraged to ask questions – what aspects of the story are designated to be seen. Above all we miss to free ourselves from the fate of inevitable. It is the tolerance of continuous openness of this meaning.
I know that this quiet figure carries epic element to communicate truth of him and men’s existence in general.
SUSAN MOWATT 11.20 – 11.40
An Overview of Contemporary Scottish Tapestry.
Susan Mowatt completed a BA Drawing and Painting and an MA Tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland. She has worked as a weaver at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop and has continued to weave and exhibit her own work in tapestry.
YASUKO FUJINO 11.40 – 12.00
Own work
Yasuko Fujino was born in Osaka, Japan and graduated from Kyoto City University with a Master of Fine Arts. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, worked to commission and held solo exhibitions.
JANE FREEAR-WYLD 1.00 – 1.20
Digital technologies, the design process and tapestry weaving: from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary
Jane Freear-Wyld is a tapestry weaver who works on frames or an upright loom, using mainly natural fibres. Whatever the subject matter, she first photographs her source material using a digital camera so she can immediately see the potential of an image. Back in the studio, tapestry designs evolve from these digital images through computer manipulation using a variety of programs. Inspirtation comes from both the ultra modern and the prehistoric, with ancient standing stones a recurrent theme. In 1998 I discovered scanning and Adobe Photoshop, and how a humble photograph can become an exciting tapestry. Design possibilities are endless, and the effect on both my designs and weaving techniques is incredibly positive. My signature style has become designs based on small squares and rectangles, combined with weaving techniques resulting in a stable structure. Working on slices from digital images I have refined my working methods, now ensuring each manipulation is saved giving me a full overview of the whole design/manipulation process.
Knowing my tapestry designs are completely unique to me is a significant benefit of using digital technologies. Whilst like all of us I am influenced by other weavers and artists, I do not want to merely reproduce other people’s work. I want my work to be distinctly mine.
New technologies are central to design development and my signature style but it’s still the process of weaving I love, and why I’m an artist/weaver. For me, tapestry is painting with colours mixed from threads providing the means to interpret a digitally produced design. Although crucial, new technologies are simply a means to an end - ensuring I can sit at my loom creating my tapestries from the boxes of yarn around me.
KIRSTY DARLSTON 1.20 – 1.40
The Loom as a Stage for Performing Community History
In 2005 Kirsty Darlston was commissioned by the Moonee Valley City Council to facilitate the creation of the Moonee Valley Flag. She is a weaver who lives in South Australia.
Over the long process of weaving the City of Moonee Valley flag in 2006 I became very interested the dialogues that I was having with the public at the loom and how my performance as a working weaver and community artist facilitated these conversations. With the loom as a stage I was performing on a number of levels. I was performing the importance of the community stories to the city. As I wove I would explain the process that I had undergone with community members to come up with the design; as such I became a voice for the community members that I had consulted with, imparting the importance of the textiles objects to them, retelling their stories, affirming their place on the map. The textile object is a universalising form that connected most people who entered the space and I heard many tales of textiles practices 'in the old country', tales of skills being passed on, tales tinged with the loss of old ways, cultural meanings and the waning of use of skills. The responses form the public seemed to fit into two categories- firstly there was a sense of awe for the skills, from those who had little or no experience with making. The second type of conversation takes place inside the space of awe, the space of the creator and often involved confessions of love of technique, complicit remarks that refer to the space that the body creates through movement when making. This space is referred to with reverence: it is a space apart that is treasured and longed for.I aim to explore and define the interactions taking place between the general public and the artist (myself) working in a public place and critiquing them in relation to contemporary craft theory and theories of performitivity to analyse the figure of the weaver as a performer of the meanings of craft within public space.
ROBYN MOUNTCASTLE – 1.40 – 2.00
Colour and Symbol:Woven Tapestry in Ceremonial Settings
Robyn Mountcastle is a tapestry weaver living and working in Melbourne.
· Brief reference to historic Ecclesiastical tapestries in Europe and Australia.
· Type of brief one receives for an Ecclesiastical commission.
· Sourcing appropriate imagery. Lore and legend.
· Colour symbolism and meaning as represented in Liturgy and Seasons.
· Medieval colour symbolism. (Prof. Christel Meier current theory)
· Language of colour used in heraldry. (Michel Pastoureau)
· Colour interpretation. Our dependence on the archetypal, cosmological and psychological aspects of colour.
· Why tapestry and viewer response.
ANTON VEENSTRA 2.00 – 2.20
Tapestry: Ornamented Narrative.
Anton Veenstra is a tapestry weaver living and working in Sydney.
Recent efforts to ornament tapestry have created great discussion. Oleg Grabar's book, The Mediation of Ornament, describes the attracting/repulsive effect of ornament in its dialogue with reality and has great relevance to contemporary multi-media textile practice. John Eric Riis' work Eyecon Figural Group represents a successful collaboration of diverse textile media, in a career characterised by wide experimentation, based on his collection of world textiles. Embroidery
and with crystals and pearls, feature in his work; also the applique of smaller pieces of tapestry onto a larger work. I want to examine my own textile practice in terms of his example: my
research into ethnographic textile, the use of tapestry in its representational mode, reversing tapestry's triumphalist tradition of recording the victories of power, to evoke instead experience and memory previously marginalized or forgotten.
The great strength of tapestry was in its representational power; historically debased however, as mere copies of paintings, the ascendant visual genre. In reviving the practice of tapestry, we seek to reinvigorate what was seen as a decadent form. Therefore its strengths and weakness need to be
carefully assessed. The embroidering of a tapestry surface results in a hybrid visual and textured spectacle: does it also diminish one of tapestry's best characteristics? Prof. Diana Wood Conroy wrote that '' the sign of tapestry speaks with many voices'', a warning that art practice is subjective,
each artist bringing her personal energy and strengths to the task, each achieving different ends with the same material. In this woven medium perhaps the very surface can be seen as ornament.
After all today the sexy house style of representation is photography. I often look at viewers at an exhibition of tapestry: the glance seems to ricochet off the surface; are the furrows of warp and weft in the visual field experienced as poor visual transmission, an old tv set whose ghostly grainy
images are not tolerated for long? Message and medium certainly jostle for attention. In my carpet Hanging Garden I sought to minimise this, creating a liminal cultural space by referencing carpet weaving traditions. Thus in the indecision between high western and exotic eastern genres, the message might be transmitted undiluted. My work in the land exhibition seeks to summarise my thoughts about personal narrative and cross-cultural textile genres: depicting the Kangaroo Paw flower as indigenous yet transplanted, alongside button-columns representing the Tree of Life motif of ancient woven traditions: signposting exoticism, migration, memory, hybridity.
CAROL CASSIDY 3.00 – 3.30
Lao Tapestry/Textiles
American weaver Carol Cassidy's Lao Textiles workshop, studio and gallery specialises in 100 percent hand-woven silk. Carol and the 50 Lao artisans she employs produce exquisitely crafted works, which have been collected by individuals and institutions world -wide.
Carol arrived in Laos in 1989, as a textile expert with the United Nations Development Programme. In Laos she discovered a "weaver's paradise": a country with a rich history of weaving and an elaborate vocabulary of design motifs. A year later, she started Lao Textiles, among the first commercial weaving workshops in Laos, blending her own refined artistic sensibility and design skills with ancient local techniques and traditions to create contemporary woven art. Wall hangings often take four months to complete; on the most complex designs only two centimetres are woven per day.
"Threads are our palette. We weave art." Carol Cassidy
MRS VANDARA AMPHAYPHONE and MR KEOMONTREE DAUNGBUPHA 3.30-4pm
Mrs Vandara Amphayphone
Mrs Vandara is the president of the Lao Handicraft Association , Luang Prabang Province, Lao PDR and she is a committee member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Luang Prabang Province. She has an extensive textile collection and knowledge of Lao textiles through her own practice and working with other dyers and weavers.
Mr Keomontree Duangbupha, Lao Antique Textiles Collection
Mr Keomontree Duangbupha, is a textile dealer and sells a good selection of high quality textiles at 24/6 Ban Xieng Moune, Sisavang Vong Road. (Old quarter), Luang Prabang, Laos, tel: 856-71-212775, keomontree@yahoo.com A satisfied customer says: 'He is very serious, knowledgable, and patient with those less informed. He has a great collection of very interesting pieces'. Another reports: 'Keomontree is a great specialist on Lao textiles and a very nice person whom I have met several times.'
JANE KIDD 4.00 – 4.30
To Practice in the Middle: A Craft / Art Dialogue
Jane Kidd is a Canadian tapestry weaver who teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design.
In this presentation I will focus on my own practices as a tapestry weaver. Although I will reference images of my work and discuss some of the themes that are explored through image and narrative, much of my talk will focus on my identity as a tapestry weaver and my personal commitment to finding meaning and relevance in the process of tapestry making. I will consider my practice as ‘a practice in the middle’ a bridge between two dynamic paradigms Craft and Art, and share my attempts to navigate the circuitous path that links the fine arts, tapestry and the craft of weaving.
MARDI NOWAK and panel 4.30 – 5.00
Mardi Nowak is a tapestry weaver and curator at Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn, Melbourne. She will make concluding comments and chair a panel making final remarks.
DINNER – UNIVERSITY HOUSE – 7.00
SPEAKERS: ARCHIE BRENNAN
CRESSIDE COLLETTE
SUSAN MOWATT
LINDA WALLACE
ANNIKA EKDAHL 9.10-10.00
Road Movie (Verdure): Visiting Mom
Annika Ekdahl was born and lives in Sweden. She has a Master of Fine Art from the University of Gothenburg, Department of Craft and Design and at http://annikaekdahl.se/eye.php you can read a long list of exhibitions and commissions demonstrating her commitment and achievements. The Swedish Arts Grants Committee has recognised her work by giving her a grant for FOR FIVE YEARS!!! (And after that she can apply for another five years. See www.konstnarsnamnden.se.)
My idea is to talk about the historical verdure tapestries along with my personal struggle to create a contemporary one. I will connect to the Tapestry 2008 theme LAND, since it connects beautifully to the very soul of verdure tapestries.
There is a book on one of the ANU library book-shelves describing a suit of Belgian tapestries, hanging in Poland. I have the same book. I found it in a second-hand bookshop in Poland 10 years ago. I love that book! I’ve spent hours studying the illustrations, those marvelous masterpieces from the 16th and 17th centuries. I fell in love with these tapestries, especially the red mille-fleur ones, with gods and angels and devils and knights on horses and dressed up ladies with garlands of flowers in their hair. My own tapestry “The Baroque Party”, from 2000 was very influenced by these woven stories.
There is another group of tapestries in the textile art history – also featured in my book, in our book. In Europe they are usually called verdures. These verdures have never really interested me – I found them more like decorative backgrounds with no particular story to tell. So, when I showed a tapestry of mine called “The Theatre in the Park” to a writer who visited my house, and when she exclaimed: “oh I see, you are into verdures now”. I denied it at first. But of course she was right. I had made a verdure with vegetation, animals, birds and ornaments, people in funny costumes.
My Mother died 5 years ago. My brother and I decided to spread her ashes in a small town up north in Sweden, where she grow up. I live in the south, 1000 km from this town. So, last summer I decided to fill our car with all necessary things for one weeks survival on the road up north through the beautiful Swedish landcsape, visiting childhood spots and new and undiscovered places. Exploring my motherland and visiting my Mother. And at the same time designing a tapestry based on this trip. Like a woven road movie. With vegetation, flowers, animals. In fact a verdure. It’s in progress now on my loom and I’ve decided to give it this title: ”Road Movie (Verdure): Visiting Mom”.
FIONA RUTHERFORD 10.00-10.30
Issey Miyake and Tapestry
Fiona Rutherford lives and works in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England and she is a tapestry weaver who has travelled and exhibited her work in Japan since her first visit in 2001. In this talk she will discuss how Japanese clothing, both traditional and contemporary, have been an important source of inspiration for her tapestry designs. It is how cloth from one culture informs the making of another.
Patterns, symbols and mark making combined in a vivid colour palate are central to Fiona’s tapestries. She will illustrate how the layers of colour and pattern found in the kimono became a source of inspiration not only for her visual imagery but also in redefining her tapestries as more sculptural work that could be deconstructed into selvedges and fragments that suggested a bigger canvas.
In particular she will focus on the influence of the Japanese designer Issey Miyake who fuses traditional and contemporary thinking in his sculptural approach to textiles. She will discuss the impact of seeing his work in “The Radical Fashion” exhibition at the V & A in London at the same time she was researching the museum’s kimono collection and how this sparked a process of change where East met West in a new body of work.
DIANA WOOD CONROY 11.00 – 11.30
Tapestry as tesserae and fresco: the hidden weaves of Late Roman antiquity
Diana Wood Conroy has a BA (Hons) in Archaeology from the University of Sydney and Doctor of Creative Arts degree from the University of Wollongong. A tapestry weaver since the 1970s, she has continued her research interests in archaeology and visual cultures. A member of the University of Sydney Paphos Theatre Excavation team since 1996, she has researched the Roman wall paintings found in the theatre and in near-by tombs. She received the Distinguished Research Award from the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools in 2005 for the breadth of her contributions across the disciplines of art and archaeology. Her exhibition work explores relationships between classical, Aboriginal and personal worlds in tapestry and drawing, and is held in national and international collections. An archaeological approach informs her critical writing on textiles and tapestry. She is Professor of Visual Arts, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong.
What survives of the organic materials of textiles in the Roman world of Mediterranean archaeology is a partial and tantalising glimpse of the richness of figurative, woven textiles. By studying the variety and intricacy of surviving 'carpet' mosaics and 'tapestry' frescoes from Roman houses, public buildings and Early Christian basilicas we can reconstruct not only the vivid colour and composition of textiles but also see the primacy of textile imagery in classical representation.The paper explores materials discovered in recent archaeological excavations in Paphos, Cyprus, in the Greco-Roman theatre and nearby tombs and houses. Diana Wood Conroy investigates the fragmentary mosaics and wall-paintings that have emerged during her ten years with the University of Sydney Paphos Theatre Excavation, and shows how the 'haptic', tactile qualities of legendary classical textiles, now lost, are translated into the related textures of mosaic tesserae and painted plaster. NANCY ARTHUR HOSKINS 11.30 – 12.00
Tut to Tiraz: Tracing the Tapestries of Egypt (Pharaonic, Coptic, And Early Islamic Fabrics)
Nancy Arthur Hoskins is a weaver and the world authority on Coptic textiles having researched them in museums internationally. She has presented seminars with museum collections at the Textile Museum, Washington D.C., The Cincinnati Museum of Art, The Denver Museum of Art, Le Musée du Périgord, Périgueux, France, The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and with her personal collection. Three thousand years of fabulous Pharaonic, Coptic, and Early Islamic Egyptian fabrics from my research in over fifty museums around the world are shared with woven recreations and over twenty actual ancient fragments from my personal collection. This was a time when weaving techniques and technology went from plain tabby to tapestry, taqueté, and tiraz; themes changed from Classical to Christian, to Islamic calligraphy; and wool, silk, and cotton were introduced to the linen weavers of old Egypt. This lecture reviews the development of textile style, structure, and technology at the time in history when conquest and caravans transferred materials and knowledge from West to East and East to West.
SUSAN MARTIN MAFFEI 12.00-12.30
Pre-Columbian(Andean) Tapestry and Its Relevance to 20th Century Painting
Susan Martin Maffei has been weaving tapestry professionally since 1985. Her background includes training at Les Gobelins in Paris and apprenticeship and studio work at Scheuer Tapestry Studio in NYC. She has taught and exhibited in the U.S. and abroad and has work in both public and private collections.
G. W. BOT 1.30 – 2.00
The making of 'Glyphs' at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop'
G.W. BOT works as a printmaker, painter and sculptor in Canberra. She was born in Pakistan of Australian parents and studied art in London Paris and Australia. Since 1985 she has worked as a full time artist
In 2005 the Victorian Tapestry Workshop invited me to collaborate with them on the production of the large tapestry 'Glyphs' which measures 90 x 397 cm.
Essentially I want to explore in my paper the affinity in the creative process between working as a printmaker and working as a tapestry artist. Many years ago I was inspired by the 'Lady and the
Unicorn' tapestries whilst working at the Cluny Museum in Paris. This eventually grew into my linocut cycle of 1996 titled 'The lady and the poet'. Problems of interweaving of imagery, real and
simulated cloth designs and textures and rich intertextuality were all considerations in that series .
About a decade later I developed my series of 'Glyphs' envisaged as linocuts , which built on the experience of 'The lady and poet' series and set out to devise a complex language for the Australian
bush. The realisation of one of my prints from this series as a tapestry in some way saw the process of the tapestry into print and the print into tapestry run a complete circle. The paper will explore
some of these parallels and synergies.
NELL 2.00 – 2.30
The making of "Let me put my love into you" at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop”
Nell is an emerging Sydney artist forging a career in a range of mediums. She was commissioned to design a major tapestry, which was woven by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, described on a blog as “her sexy snake and apple”.
SUE LAWTY 3.00 – 4.00
Embedded and Released
Landscape is Sue Lawty’s main inspiration, working from direct experience walking, climbing collecting materials. She has researched tapestry and textiles extensively and her work provides a critical link in the chain that connects the historic with the contemporary, the traditional with the innovative. Lawty has collaborated on a significant new body of work with the V&A Textile Collection: the result includes two site specific wall installations and a blog: suelawty.com/
Running over the high moors: primal, fundamental contact with air, wind, rain, mist, sun, warm, cold, ground… so good to be out of the studio. Textile history is writ large on this land. The emergence and growth of textiles and my attraction to live and work here are both as a direct result of the Pennine landscape. Dramatic, steep hills and deep valleys shaped the wool industry and, in turn, have been shaped by it. Here are high fields full of sheep and an abundance of soft water for washing and power. Since the Middle Ages, rows of narrow, stone mullioned ‘weavers’ windows (built into the cottages to allow more light into the dark interiors) attest to the endeavour of the hundreds of individuals who carved a living from their handlooms. The Piece Hall where once they took their pieces of cloth to be sold to merchants is, today, an art gallery.
I grew up under the impression that the large medieval tapestries, so familiar in the stately homes of Derbyshire, were quintessentially English. (Context has a lot to answer for.) Large expanses of bluish battle or hunting scenes seemed synonymous with these grand houses. Hardwick Hall, just a stone’s throw from my house as a child, has many fine examples. Then, as now, I was rather put off by the subject matter, choosing instead to home in on the exquisite detail. I later learned that these were probably woven in Arras or Tournai. However insular our personal history, our choices are contextualised by world history.
Throughout my creative life I have been drawn to textiles from times past, re-examining structure and exploring textile language. In our present technological age, it feels important that the past should inform the present and that the human mark of the individual should be evident.
I no longer feel so obsessive about tapestry per se. In recent work I use natural elements from the land - tiny found stones – to explore repetition and language of mark. I am interested in structure, rhythm, repetition and paring away excess. Rock has always informed my work – I am grounded by it. It is fundamental to my thinking and understanding. In developing my creative language, I also feel grounded but no longer bound by textile heritage and tradition.
CLIO PADOVANI and DR JESSICA HEMMINGS 4.00 – 5.00
Clio Padovani was born in Florence, Italy and received her BA degree in Tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art and her MA at the Royal College of Art in 1989. Since then she has continued to develop tapestry as an expressive art medium, participating in numerous international exhibitions. She works as a Senior Lecturer at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. Clio Padovani has sent a film as her presentation.
Dr Jessica Hemmings is Programme Leader Textiles, Fashion & Fibre, Winchester School of Art, GB.
Clio Padovani: Constructed Time: Weaving And Video As Temporal Collages
In this presentation she explores video in relation to tapestry so as to promote an understanding of how a montage of threads of narrative can induce unexpected and compelling experiences: occasions that suggest temporal dis-junctures that are like involuntary memory.
Iterative processes, such as weaving and video, work with the constant of time: the real and imaginary threads which materially construct a tapestry work against the loss of the moment, each thread of weft accumulating to assert a physical presence (and present) of permanence.
Moving images give none of these assurances, as the medium recursively produces, in common with the vanishing, ungraspable images of memory, a series of endlessly transforming moments. Video records the movement of disappearance and transformation. I suggest this is the paradox of video: as the weaving of the thread temporarily suspends time and makes the present stable, so moving images, which record loss, offer the possibility of restoring the moment. This redemptive temporality enables the instance, infiltrated by narratives of memory and history, to co-exist with, and alter, the present-ness experienced by the viewing subject.
Dr Jessica Hemmings: Memory, Landscape and Time: Contemporary Written and Woven Narratives
“As an imaginative writer I find myself reading in continuously changing ways,” explains the postcolonial author Wilson Harris. “I reread works by writers I may have misjudged and which I return to and perceive differently. I reread my own fictions after a long while and see connections there I planted and yet which seem utterly new.” This paper proposes a ‘rereading’ of contemporary tapestry from two perspectives: the narration of memory and landscape as articulated in the tapestries of Sue Lawty, Clio Padovani and Shelly Goldsmith and the metaphor of tapestry used to express memory and landscape which plays a central role in Harris’ novel The Carnival Trilogy.
This research is, in part, a response to Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s warning in Women’s Work of the interpretative mistakes generations can make if the separation between the use and the creation of textiles grows too great. Barber suggests our common understanding that Homer’s Penelope wove a plain funerary cloth by day and unpicked it by night to stall her suitors is based on a collective ignorance and distance from the pace of weaving. “Homer’s audience,” Barber argues when she suggests that we have long misunderstood the fabric Penelope wove, “would have know that only the weaving of a non-repetitious pattern such as a story is so very time-consuming, but we who no longer weave or regularly watch others weave are more easily misled.”
“There is always a discrepancy,” Harris’s contemporary reincarnation of Penelope concludes, “and as a consequence I unravel the work I have done, unstitch everything, and start all over again from the very beginning whenever that was… [it] never quite fits. Always a sleeve of element or a fluid stitch that’s out of joint.” Reading fiction’s metaphor of tapestry against contemporary tapestry practice, this research attempts to repair the longstanding material misreading of Homer through the reconsideration of the narratives of tapestry in twenty-first century fiction and textile art. A comparative reading both acknowledges the threat of interpretative mistakes possible when distanced from making (Barber) but also celebrates the possibility of a nonlinear, dynamic narrative possible when rereading the seemingly familiar (Harris).
EXHIBITIONS RECEPTION, SCHOOL OF ART GALLERY, 6PM – All Welcome
MC: Gordon Bull, Head of School of Art
Speakers: Eve Thwaites
Mrs Kommaly Chanthavong
Wendy Teakel
Kay Lawrence
INFORMAL DINNER after reception at MEKONG DELTA – limited to 60 people
Christine Pearson from ACTIVE TRAVEL has arranged an option for dinner at the ASIAN MEKONG DELTA KITCHEN restaurant, Shop 18 Marcus Clarke St, Corner of Alinga and Marcus Clarke, a short walk from the Art School. The meal will be very traditional LAO food.Inclusive Price $25 (including corkage - BYO) Pre Paid as numbers limited to 60 persons. Christine will take bookings with payment at registration from 8am on Friday 2 May, outside the Lecture Theatre, School of Art. For people who do not like Lao food, want to wonder off with a small group of friends or if we reach 60 bookings and have to make a cut-off, there are lots of other restaurants nearby in WEST ROW or the city centre and bookings would not be required.
SATURDAY 3 MAY
AINO KAJANIEMI 9.10 – 10.00
Subjects from the innermost heart – a personal account of work
Aino Kajaniemi studied at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland and has held 21 solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows since 1984. She has woven liturgical church textiles, has work in major collections including Helsinki Art Museum, Intelcom SA, Switzeland and State of Finland
“Textiles bring us memories through the skin; they can bring happiness, by touching materials one can live the past into reality. In this way my textiles become intimate. I have not yet found my limit, there is still something to search for and find. In this way I want to weave my works out into the world. “ Telos Art Textiles of the World Scandinavia.
BRENDA GOGGS – 10.00 – 10.30
Tapestry weaving - a slow, self-absorbed, personal, space
Brenda Goggs is a tapestry weaver living in Canberra, ACT Australia. She designs and weaves her own tapestry designs in modern wall hangings. Her work as a weaver focuses on ideas related to the Australian land and landscape and our place in it.
When tapestry weaving is such a slow, self-absorbed, personal, space, what is the point of this process in a world full of trouble, where there is no possibility to rewind or reverse one’s process?
ANDRZEJ BANACHOWICZ – 11.00 – 11.20
“Tapestries and objects – my creation or Mystery of time and man”
Andrzej Banachowicz was born in Poland and gained a Master of Arts Diploma with distinction in Sculpture and Exhibition Design. Since 1992 he has been head of the Fiber Arts Studio 11 in Poznan, Poland. He has participated in many individual and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
My creation combines many conventionalities, symbols and art signs are compound. Man’s symbolic figure appears as sign in my tapestries, revealing vision of man and his ultimate road. I bring new worlds into being with this man holding pillow under his armpit, I evoke these already passed away, I find sensations impossible to put into words. I create illusion revealing new reality. That is why I am always impressed by Waldemar Łysiak’s book “Asphalt saloon”: “ Do we know everything concerning ourselves, do we remember what happened during last month? We’ve been rushing to swallow continent …. I do not know what’s your talisman brought from your voyage. I brought this small pillow made by Modern Pillow Company; I have slept on it in my car. It’s difficult to believe what’s the capacity of such small pillow. Few sanctuaries, many towns and settlements, forts and houses, rivers, forests and casinos, Disneyland and Hollywood, prison in Yuma, El Alamo, Elvis’s death, gunmen and black people, the biggest sculpture in the world, and small bookshop in New Orleans. Sometimes I fell asleep on this pillow, being very calm, feeling like pilgrim who went to Mecca and paid his dept to Allah. This pillow stuffed with memories will remind me after many years that I was young once. One is young once. Having such pillows just once is fine.
This chapter “Modern Pillow Co. pillow” became a beautiful example of timeless penetration of meanings and arts. Textile is also of my interests because of the meaning transfer ability it shares moods, emotions. The complete transfer of initial appointment – such total vision of life, voyage into mystery, hidden by the man with the pillow. This man with pillow image placed in labyrinths, open and closed spaces reaches deeply to subconscious place archetype, leading through borders of real world to the eternal mystery of another existence. I think that any of my works reveal the identity of the person. Imagination is encouraged to ask questions – what aspects of the story are designated to be seen. Above all we miss to free ourselves from the fate of inevitable. It is the tolerance of continuous openness of this meaning.
I know that this quiet figure carries epic element to communicate truth of him and men’s existence in general.
SUSAN MOWATT 11.20 – 11.40
An Overview of Contemporary Scottish Tapestry.
Susan Mowatt completed a BA Drawing and Painting and an MA Tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland. She has worked as a weaver at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop and has continued to weave and exhibit her own work in tapestry.
YASUKO FUJINO 11.40 – 12.00
Own work
Yasuko Fujino was born in Osaka, Japan and graduated from Kyoto City University with a Master of Fine Arts. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, worked to commission and held solo exhibitions.
JANE FREEAR-WYLD 1.00 – 1.20
Digital technologies, the design process and tapestry weaving: from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary
Jane Freear-Wyld is a tapestry weaver who works on frames or an upright loom, using mainly natural fibres. Whatever the subject matter, she first photographs her source material using a digital camera so she can immediately see the potential of an image. Back in the studio, tapestry designs evolve from these digital images through computer manipulation using a variety of programs. Inspirtation comes from both the ultra modern and the prehistoric, with ancient standing stones a recurrent theme. In 1998 I discovered scanning and Adobe Photoshop, and how a humble photograph can become an exciting tapestry. Design possibilities are endless, and the effect on both my designs and weaving techniques is incredibly positive. My signature style has become designs based on small squares and rectangles, combined with weaving techniques resulting in a stable structure. Working on slices from digital images I have refined my working methods, now ensuring each manipulation is saved giving me a full overview of the whole design/manipulation process.
Knowing my tapestry designs are completely unique to me is a significant benefit of using digital technologies. Whilst like all of us I am influenced by other weavers and artists, I do not want to merely reproduce other people’s work. I want my work to be distinctly mine.
New technologies are central to design development and my signature style but it’s still the process of weaving I love, and why I’m an artist/weaver. For me, tapestry is painting with colours mixed from threads providing the means to interpret a digitally produced design. Although crucial, new technologies are simply a means to an end - ensuring I can sit at my loom creating my tapestries from the boxes of yarn around me.
KIRSTY DARLSTON 1.20 – 1.40
The Loom as a Stage for Performing Community History
In 2005 Kirsty Darlston was commissioned by the Moonee Valley City Council to facilitate the creation of the Moonee Valley Flag. She is a weaver who lives in South Australia.
Over the long process of weaving the City of Moonee Valley flag in 2006 I became very interested the dialogues that I was having with the public at the loom and how my performance as a working weaver and community artist facilitated these conversations. With the loom as a stage I was performing on a number of levels. I was performing the importance of the community stories to the city. As I wove I would explain the process that I had undergone with community members to come up with the design; as such I became a voice for the community members that I had consulted with, imparting the importance of the textiles objects to them, retelling their stories, affirming their place on the map. The textile object is a universalising form that connected most people who entered the space and I heard many tales of textiles practices 'in the old country', tales of skills being passed on, tales tinged with the loss of old ways, cultural meanings and the waning of use of skills. The responses form the public seemed to fit into two categories- firstly there was a sense of awe for the skills, from those who had little or no experience with making. The second type of conversation takes place inside the space of awe, the space of the creator and often involved confessions of love of technique, complicit remarks that refer to the space that the body creates through movement when making. This space is referred to with reverence: it is a space apart that is treasured and longed for.I aim to explore and define the interactions taking place between the general public and the artist (myself) working in a public place and critiquing them in relation to contemporary craft theory and theories of performitivity to analyse the figure of the weaver as a performer of the meanings of craft within public space.
ROBYN MOUNTCASTLE – 1.40 – 2.00
Colour and Symbol:Woven Tapestry in Ceremonial Settings
Robyn Mountcastle is a tapestry weaver living and working in Melbourne.
· Brief reference to historic Ecclesiastical tapestries in Europe and Australia.
· Type of brief one receives for an Ecclesiastical commission.
· Sourcing appropriate imagery. Lore and legend.
· Colour symbolism and meaning as represented in Liturgy and Seasons.
· Medieval colour symbolism. (Prof. Christel Meier current theory)
· Language of colour used in heraldry. (Michel Pastoureau)
· Colour interpretation. Our dependence on the archetypal, cosmological and psychological aspects of colour.
· Why tapestry and viewer response.
ANTON VEENSTRA 2.00 – 2.20
Tapestry: Ornamented Narrative.
Anton Veenstra is a tapestry weaver living and working in Sydney.
Recent efforts to ornament tapestry have created great discussion. Oleg Grabar's book, The Mediation of Ornament, describes the attracting/repulsive effect of ornament in its dialogue with reality and has great relevance to contemporary multi-media textile practice. John Eric Riis' work Eyecon Figural Group represents a successful collaboration of diverse textile media, in a career characterised by wide experimentation, based on his collection of world textiles. Embroidery
and with crystals and pearls, feature in his work; also the applique of smaller pieces of tapestry onto a larger work. I want to examine my own textile practice in terms of his example: my
research into ethnographic textile, the use of tapestry in its representational mode, reversing tapestry's triumphalist tradition of recording the victories of power, to evoke instead experience and memory previously marginalized or forgotten.
The great strength of tapestry was in its representational power; historically debased however, as mere copies of paintings, the ascendant visual genre. In reviving the practice of tapestry, we seek to reinvigorate what was seen as a decadent form. Therefore its strengths and weakness need to be
carefully assessed. The embroidering of a tapestry surface results in a hybrid visual and textured spectacle: does it also diminish one of tapestry's best characteristics? Prof. Diana Wood Conroy wrote that '' the sign of tapestry speaks with many voices'', a warning that art practice is subjective,
each artist bringing her personal energy and strengths to the task, each achieving different ends with the same material. In this woven medium perhaps the very surface can be seen as ornament.
After all today the sexy house style of representation is photography. I often look at viewers at an exhibition of tapestry: the glance seems to ricochet off the surface; are the furrows of warp and weft in the visual field experienced as poor visual transmission, an old tv set whose ghostly grainy
images are not tolerated for long? Message and medium certainly jostle for attention. In my carpet Hanging Garden I sought to minimise this, creating a liminal cultural space by referencing carpet weaving traditions. Thus in the indecision between high western and exotic eastern genres, the message might be transmitted undiluted. My work in the land exhibition seeks to summarise my thoughts about personal narrative and cross-cultural textile genres: depicting the Kangaroo Paw flower as indigenous yet transplanted, alongside button-columns representing the Tree of Life motif of ancient woven traditions: signposting exoticism, migration, memory, hybridity.
CAROL CASSIDY 3.00 – 3.30
Lao Tapestry/Textiles
American weaver Carol Cassidy's Lao Textiles workshop, studio and gallery specialises in 100 percent hand-woven silk. Carol and the 50 Lao artisans she employs produce exquisitely crafted works, which have been collected by individuals and institutions world -wide.
Carol arrived in Laos in 1989, as a textile expert with the United Nations Development Programme. In Laos she discovered a "weaver's paradise": a country with a rich history of weaving and an elaborate vocabulary of design motifs. A year later, she started Lao Textiles, among the first commercial weaving workshops in Laos, blending her own refined artistic sensibility and design skills with ancient local techniques and traditions to create contemporary woven art. Wall hangings often take four months to complete; on the most complex designs only two centimetres are woven per day.
"Threads are our palette. We weave art." Carol Cassidy
MRS VANDARA AMPHAYPHONE and MR KEOMONTREE DAUNGBUPHA 3.30-4pm
Mrs Vandara Amphayphone
Mrs Vandara is the president of the Lao Handicraft Association , Luang Prabang Province, Lao PDR and she is a committee member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Luang Prabang Province. She has an extensive textile collection and knowledge of Lao textiles through her own practice and working with other dyers and weavers.
Mr Keomontree Duangbupha, Lao Antique Textiles Collection
Mr Keomontree Duangbupha, is a textile dealer and sells a good selection of high quality textiles at 24/6 Ban Xieng Moune, Sisavang Vong Road. (Old quarter), Luang Prabang, Laos, tel: 856-71-212775, keomontree@yahoo.com A satisfied customer says: 'He is very serious, knowledgable, and patient with those less informed. He has a great collection of very interesting pieces'. Another reports: 'Keomontree is a great specialist on Lao textiles and a very nice person whom I have met several times.'
JANE KIDD 4.00 – 4.30
To Practice in the Middle: A Craft / Art Dialogue
Jane Kidd is a Canadian tapestry weaver who teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design.
In this presentation I will focus on my own practices as a tapestry weaver. Although I will reference images of my work and discuss some of the themes that are explored through image and narrative, much of my talk will focus on my identity as a tapestry weaver and my personal commitment to finding meaning and relevance in the process of tapestry making. I will consider my practice as ‘a practice in the middle’ a bridge between two dynamic paradigms Craft and Art, and share my attempts to navigate the circuitous path that links the fine arts, tapestry and the craft of weaving.
MARDI NOWAK and panel 4.30 – 5.00
Mardi Nowak is a tapestry weaver and curator at Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn, Melbourne. She will make concluding comments and chair a panel making final remarks.
DINNER – UNIVERSITY HOUSE – 7.00
SPEAKERS: ARCHIE BRENNAN
CRESSIDE COLLETTE
SUSAN MOWATT
LINDA WALLACE
Tapestries in Public Spaces in Canberra
Tapestries in Public Spaces in Canberra
1. The ACT Legislative Assembly, Civic Square, London Circuit.
“Canberra in the Future”, an embroidery – CIT Outreach Programme with Keiko Amenomori – Schmeisser in 1991. Located on the 2nd floor outside the Assembly library.- Valerie Kirk, 2 tapestries and painting installed in corridor, upper level. Available for viewing from 9am until 4.30 weekdays.
2. The A.N.U. University House, 1 Balmain Cres. Acton.
“Jubilee Tapestries” woven by Valerie Kirk – commissioned to celebrate Nobel Prize winners associated with ANU. Located in the Foyer area outside Boffins Restaurant – available for viewing from 7am until 9pm. *boxed sets of Cards for sale at the reception desk.
2. C.S.I.R.O. Discovery Centre, Clunies Ross St., Black Mountain.
“Discovery” tapestry commissioned by the Myer family for the Discovery Centre, designed by Christopher Pyett and woven at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. Located in the Lecture Theatre where the Canberra Spinners and Weavers are holding their ‘Warped and Twisted’ exhibition, Sat. 4th and Sun. 5th May. 10am – 4pm. Available at other times when the theatre is not is use during Discovery opening hours.
3. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The R.G.Casey Building, John McEwen Cres. Barton. Contact David Poulter ; 62613256 to arrange a large group visit.
Tapestries located in the public foyer and only available weekdays.
Two large tapestries, designed by Ginger Riley and John Olsen, woven by the VTW.
4. National Capitol Authority Offices, Treasury Building, King Edward Terrace, Parkes
‘City And Environs’ tapestry – faithful reproduction of Marion Mahony Griffin’s hand rendering of the plan for Canberra. Woven by Victorian Tapestry Workshop by Merrill Dumbrell, Sue Carstairs and Jan Nelson. Available for viewing in reception area weekdays 8.30am until 5pm.
A second Tapestry, ‘The View from Mount Ainslie’ is hung in the 1st floor reception area. Please call 62712888 and ask for staff to guide you to the first floor. This one was woven by Liz Nettleton’s Studio.
6. National Gallery of Australia, Parkes Pl., Parkes tel; 62406411
-Ming Dynasty Kesi Weave tapestry, located in Gallery 10, Asian Art Space, downstairs near Sculpture Gallery - Available for viewing during gallery hours. Temporary Exhibit.
-Margaret Grafton tapestry, aluminium weft, polyester cord warp, located near the lift and Members’ Office on level 1. Temporary exhibit.
-Two tapestries are located in the small Theatre –
“Pretty As” design by Richard Larter – woven by VTW, weavers – Sara Lindsay, Pam Joyce, Alan Holland, Cresside Collette & Cheryl Thornton, and “Rosella” design by Lesley Dumbrell also woven by VTW, weavers Iain Young and Sonja Hanson.
These tapestries were commissioned by NGA in 1982, to add to the acoustics of the theatre. It is possible to ring and book ahead for a viewing time when the theatre is not in use.
7. National Library of Australia, Parkes Pl. Canberra City
Three tapestries commissioned for this space and designed by Mathieu Mategot woven from Australian wool in Aubusson, France, hang above the front door in the foyer of the Library and are available for viewing any time the building is open. (see http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an7835861 . )
There is another Mategot tapestry of Ayers Rock in the Manuscript reading room. This tapestry is only available to view when the reading room is open: Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm only.
Four Alice Kettle embroideries are located in the Main Reading Room on the ground floor of the library. This series is called “Australian Landscapes 1 – 1V” and it takes inspiration from the Australian landscape combined with a response to collections and study within the National Library. Alice Kettle is a leading English Artist see http://www.alicekettle.com/. Also see http://www.nla.gov.au/
These embroideries are available for viewing during Library hours 9am to 9pm Monday to Thursday - 9am – 5pm Friday and Saturday and 1.30 to 5pm Sunday.
8. National Portrait Gallery, Old Parliament House
**Portrait Gallery Closed at this time but the Associate Registrar has agreed to hang the tapestry in The Shaeffer Gallery for a private viewing on 1st May at 12 noon.
Tapestry - portrait of “Dame Elisabeth Murdoch”. Woven by Merrill Dumbrell, Victorian Tapestry Workshop.
9. Parliament House, Rugs and Tapestries
The Great Hall Tapestry, designed by Arthur Boyd, woven by Victorian Tapestry Workshop – second largest tapestry in the world. Located in the Great Hall. Available for viewing on weekends and whenever the Great Hall is not in use.
Located on the First Floor – four “ Odyssey Australia” tapestries, designed and fabricated by Australian School children with learning difficulties.
Parliament House Embroidery – located in the Gallery Level of the Great Hall – Designed by Kay Lawrence, made by the Embroiderers Guild of Australia members, 16 metres long and 65 cm deep.
Also on the first floor a floor rug woven by Liz Nettleton .
Other tapestries and rugs are located at Parliament House but require appointments and security checks before viewing (e.g.Jenny Kee’s “Oz Floramandelia”).
10. The High Court of Australia, King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Tapestry of “Shield of Arms of Commonwealth” 4.3m x 2.5m.
Woven by Victorian Tapestry Workshop – tapestry design: Ron Brooks
Located adjacent to the Bar Table in Court Number 1.
Available for viewing only if the court is not sitting, 10am – to 4 pm Monday to Friday.
Other places of Interest….
*ACT Heritage Gallery Reid, Rugs and wall hangings
10am – 1pm daily or by appointment tel; 62473832
Chisholm Street Gallery, Textiles, Rugs, Embroideries, 13 Chisholm St., Ainslie ACT
2-4 MAY – Special Exhibition of NAGALAND textiles and artefacts. Friday 2 May 2-8pm, Weekend 10- 5pm or by appointment. Tel. 62478042
http://www.chisholmstreetgallery.com/
*Rugs – Kilimns Quality rugs and textiles, Fyshwick Market, Thursday to Sunday 8am – 5pm
*Jane Brown’s Oriental Pearls and Rugs
For appointment only viewing of showroom call Sancha on 0409923585
*Impressions on Paper Gallery. 7 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT.
For more Information on Galleries, Exhibitions, Collections and Museums see;
artsaroundcanberra.com.au
1. The ACT Legislative Assembly, Civic Square, London Circuit.
“Canberra in the Future”, an embroidery – CIT Outreach Programme with Keiko Amenomori – Schmeisser in 1991. Located on the 2nd floor outside the Assembly library.- Valerie Kirk, 2 tapestries and painting installed in corridor, upper level. Available for viewing from 9am until 4.30 weekdays.
2. The A.N.U. University House, 1 Balmain Cres. Acton.
“Jubilee Tapestries” woven by Valerie Kirk – commissioned to celebrate Nobel Prize winners associated with ANU. Located in the Foyer area outside Boffins Restaurant – available for viewing from 7am until 9pm. *boxed sets of Cards for sale at the reception desk.
2. C.S.I.R.O. Discovery Centre, Clunies Ross St., Black Mountain.
“Discovery” tapestry commissioned by the Myer family for the Discovery Centre, designed by Christopher Pyett and woven at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. Located in the Lecture Theatre where the Canberra Spinners and Weavers are holding their ‘Warped and Twisted’ exhibition, Sat. 4th and Sun. 5th May. 10am – 4pm. Available at other times when the theatre is not is use during Discovery opening hours.
3. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The R.G.Casey Building, John McEwen Cres. Barton. Contact David Poulter ; 62613256 to arrange a large group visit.
Tapestries located in the public foyer and only available weekdays.
Two large tapestries, designed by Ginger Riley and John Olsen, woven by the VTW.
4. National Capitol Authority Offices, Treasury Building, King Edward Terrace, Parkes
‘City And Environs’ tapestry – faithful reproduction of Marion Mahony Griffin’s hand rendering of the plan for Canberra. Woven by Victorian Tapestry Workshop by Merrill Dumbrell, Sue Carstairs and Jan Nelson. Available for viewing in reception area weekdays 8.30am until 5pm.
A second Tapestry, ‘The View from Mount Ainslie’ is hung in the 1st floor reception area. Please call 62712888 and ask for staff to guide you to the first floor. This one was woven by Liz Nettleton’s Studio.
6. National Gallery of Australia, Parkes Pl., Parkes tel; 62406411
-Ming Dynasty Kesi Weave tapestry, located in Gallery 10, Asian Art Space, downstairs near Sculpture Gallery - Available for viewing during gallery hours. Temporary Exhibit.
-Margaret Grafton tapestry, aluminium weft, polyester cord warp, located near the lift and Members’ Office on level 1. Temporary exhibit.
-Two tapestries are located in the small Theatre –
“Pretty As” design by Richard Larter – woven by VTW, weavers – Sara Lindsay, Pam Joyce, Alan Holland, Cresside Collette & Cheryl Thornton, and “Rosella” design by Lesley Dumbrell also woven by VTW, weavers Iain Young and Sonja Hanson.
These tapestries were commissioned by NGA in 1982, to add to the acoustics of the theatre. It is possible to ring and book ahead for a viewing time when the theatre is not in use.
7. National Library of Australia, Parkes Pl. Canberra City
Three tapestries commissioned for this space and designed by Mathieu Mategot woven from Australian wool in Aubusson, France, hang above the front door in the foyer of the Library and are available for viewing any time the building is open. (see http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an7835861 . )
There is another Mategot tapestry of Ayers Rock in the Manuscript reading room. This tapestry is only available to view when the reading room is open: Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm only.
Four Alice Kettle embroideries are located in the Main Reading Room on the ground floor of the library. This series is called “Australian Landscapes 1 – 1V” and it takes inspiration from the Australian landscape combined with a response to collections and study within the National Library. Alice Kettle is a leading English Artist see http://www.alicekettle.com/. Also see http://www.nla.gov.au/
These embroideries are available for viewing during Library hours 9am to 9pm Monday to Thursday - 9am – 5pm Friday and Saturday and 1.30 to 5pm Sunday.
8. National Portrait Gallery, Old Parliament House
**Portrait Gallery Closed at this time but the Associate Registrar has agreed to hang the tapestry in The Shaeffer Gallery for a private viewing on 1st May at 12 noon.
Tapestry - portrait of “Dame Elisabeth Murdoch”. Woven by Merrill Dumbrell, Victorian Tapestry Workshop.
9. Parliament House, Rugs and Tapestries
The Great Hall Tapestry, designed by Arthur Boyd, woven by Victorian Tapestry Workshop – second largest tapestry in the world. Located in the Great Hall. Available for viewing on weekends and whenever the Great Hall is not in use.
Located on the First Floor – four “ Odyssey Australia” tapestries, designed and fabricated by Australian School children with learning difficulties.
Parliament House Embroidery – located in the Gallery Level of the Great Hall – Designed by Kay Lawrence, made by the Embroiderers Guild of Australia members, 16 metres long and 65 cm deep.
Also on the first floor a floor rug woven by Liz Nettleton .
Other tapestries and rugs are located at Parliament House but require appointments and security checks before viewing (e.g.Jenny Kee’s “Oz Floramandelia”).
10. The High Court of Australia, King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Tapestry of “Shield of Arms of Commonwealth” 4.3m x 2.5m.
Woven by Victorian Tapestry Workshop – tapestry design: Ron Brooks
Located adjacent to the Bar Table in Court Number 1.
Available for viewing only if the court is not sitting, 10am – to 4 pm Monday to Friday.
Other places of Interest….
*ACT Heritage Gallery Reid, Rugs and wall hangings
10am – 1pm daily or by appointment tel; 62473832
Chisholm Street Gallery, Textiles, Rugs, Embroideries, 13 Chisholm St., Ainslie ACT
2-4 MAY – Special Exhibition of NAGALAND textiles and artefacts. Friday 2 May 2-8pm, Weekend 10- 5pm or by appointment. Tel. 62478042
http://www.chisholmstreetgallery.com/
*Rugs – Kilimns Quality rugs and textiles, Fyshwick Market, Thursday to Sunday 8am – 5pm
*Jane Brown’s Oriental Pearls and Rugs
For appointment only viewing of showroom call Sancha on 0409923585
*Impressions on Paper Gallery. 7 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT.
For more Information on Galleries, Exhibitions, Collections and Museums see;
artsaroundcanberra.com.au
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME
TAPESTRY 2008 - The Fine Art of Weaving
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME
School of Art
Lecture Theatre
TIME
SPEAKER
FRIDAY 2 MAY
8.00
Registration and bookings for Friday night Lao dinner. Lecture Theatre, School of Art.
9.00
Welcome – Gordon Bull, Head of School of Art, ANU.
CHAIR:
Valerie Kirk
9.10 – 10.00
Annika Ekdahl – Road Movie(Verdure): Visiting Mom
10.00-10.30
Fiona Rutherford – Issey Miyake and Tapestry
TEA
10.30-11
------
CHAIR:
Brett Alexander
11.00-11.30
Diana Wood Conroy- Tapestry as tesserae and fresco: the hidden weaves of Late Roman antiquity
11.30-12.00
Nancy Hoskins - Tut to Tiraz
12.00-12.30
Susan Martin Maffei - Pre-Columbian(Andean) Tapestry and Its Relevance to 20th Century Painting
DEMONSTRATION
LUNCH
12.30 -1.30
Mrs Kommaly Chanthavong, Foyer Gallery.
Textiles Workshop
CHAIR:
Annie Trevillian
1.30 – 2.00
GW Bot -
The making of 'Glyphs' at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop'
2.00 – 2.30
Nell -
The making of "Let me put my love into you" at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop”
TEA
2.30 – 3.00
-----
CHAIR:
Linda Wallace
3.00 – 4.00
Sue Lawty - Embedded and Released
4.00 – 5.00
Clio Padovani - film and Jessica Hemmings:
Memory, Landscape and Time: Contemporary Written and Woven Narratives
RECEPTION
School of Art Gallery
Dinner
*bookings required
6.00
7.30
Exhibitions Reception
MC – Gordon Bull
Speakers: Eve Thwaites, Mrs Kommaly Chanthavong, Wendy TeakeL, Kay Lawrence
Asian Mekong Delta Kitchen, Corner Alinga Street and Marcus Clarke
SATURDAY 3 MAY
9.00
Welcome – Valerie Kirk
CHAIR:
Anne Marie Power
9.10 – 10.00
Aino Kajaniemi - Subjects from the innermost heart
10.00-10.30
Brenda Goggs - Tapestry weaving, a slow, self-absorbed, personal, space
TEA
10.30-11
------
CHAIR:
Marie Cook
11.00-11.20
Andrzej Banachowicz - “Tapestries and objects – my creation or Mystery of time and man”
11.20-11.40
Susan Mowatt - An Overview of Contemporary Scottish Tapestry.
11.40-12.00
Yasuko Fujino - Own work
LUNCH
12-1.00
-------Textiles Workshop
CHAIR:
1.00 – 1.20
Jane Freear –Wyld - Digital technologies, the designthe design process and tapestry weaving: from the
ordinary to the extra-ordinary
1.20 – 1.40
Kirsty Darlston – The Loom as a Stage for Performing Community History
1.40 – 2.00
Robyn Mountcastle - Colour and Symbol:Woven Tapestry in Ceremonial Settings
2.00 – 2.20
Anton Veenstra - Tapestry: Ornamented Narrative
TEA
2.30 – 3.00
------
CHAIR:
Rosemary Crossthwaite
3.00 – 4.00
Mr Keomontree Daungbupha
Mrs Vandara Amphayphone
Carol Cassidy - Lao Tapestry/Textiles
4.00 – 4.30
Jane Kidd - To Practice in the Middle: A Craft / Art Dialogue
4.30-5.00
Final remarks –Mardi Nowak and panel
University House
Symposium Dinner
*bookings required
7.00
Speakers: Archie Brennan
Cresside Collette
Susan Mowatt
Linda Wallace
The Australian National University, School of Art, Canberra
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Talks and Exhibitions
CRESSIDE COLLETTE - FLOORTALK At DRILL HALL GALLERY, ANU
5PM THURSDAY 1 MAY 5PM
5PM THURSDAY 1 MAY 5PM
THURSDAY 1 MAY 6.30
SHARED SPACES - TWO TAPESTRY EXHIBITIONS
At ALLIANCE FRANCAISE DE CANBERRA
66 Mc CAUGHEY ST, TURNER, CANBERRA ACT.
SPECIAL VIEWING
Land Exhibition
And White People Can hear Them To: Yvonne Eade
Under the Snow: Noriko Nakano
Mapping The distance Versus Time: Hilary Green 
Where Are We Going: Ai Ito. The three following tapestries are details of one longer tapestry.
The Masters Are Gathering
Tuesday evening in the Textile Department office
Valerie Kirk
Fiona and Nancy
Oh where Oh where would we be with out our Monique
The gathering
Valerie Kirk
Fiona and Nancy
Oh where Oh where would we be with out our Monique
The gathering
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