THE ART - Canberra 100

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GREAT HALL TAPESTRY BY ARTHUR BOYD AND THE VICTORIAN TAPESTRY WORKSHOP—PARLIAMENT HOUSE THE STORY OF THIS WORK OF ART AND ITS ACQUISITION Everyone who has visited Australia’s Parliament House will have seen the large, remarkable tapestry at the end of the Great Hall. How did it get there? Who designed it? Who wove it? Before the tapestry came a painting by Arthur Boyd (1920 – 1999), one of Australia’s most famous artists and from a family of painters, potters, architects, writers and sculptors. The commissioning of the tapestry was intricately connected with the building of Australia’s new Parliament House. The architects, Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp, asked Boyd to propose an idea for a creative work to be situated on the south wall of the Great Hall of Parliament House. The hall was to be used for ceremonial and state occasions and Boyd proposed the idea of a tapestry, which was accepted. There was much discussion and planning of the work as it had to fit with the architectural design of the space, and emphasise, with the rich timbers, the importance of the land. The brief for the project, stated: ‘What must evolve is a mutual design scheme between the architecture and the work of art in which the south wall becomes a magnetising focal point which is the catalyser of the entire space… the subject of the tapestry to be developed for this design submission is envisaged as a landscape at the scale of the room, devoid of man… The tapestry is expected to be hung in such a way that its edges would be slightly free from the wall surface rather than being tightly constrained by a peripheral frame or stretcher, thus giving the wall and the work of art a greater three-dimensional quality within the massive scale of the room.’ Boyd was commissioned by the Parliament House Construction Authority to submit a design for the tapestry. He painted three large canvases as possible designs and in 1984 the Authority chose one of these, which depicted a dense forest of eucalypts in the Shoalhaven River valley in southeastern NSW (where Boyd lived in the 1970s and 1980s), as the design for the tapestry. The painting is ‘Untitled’ and reflects Boyd’s love of the area with its light, colour and the texture of the forests. Once the painting was chosen, the making of the tapestry began. It was woven by the equivalent of 14 weavers at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop and it took over two years to complete. The scale and complexity of the project required much research and planning to resolve the technical problems involved in producing one of the world’s largest tapestries (measuring approximately 20 metres wide by nine metres high), woven in four separate pieces. Boyd worked closely with the weavers in selecting the specially dyed yarns to match the colours in his painting. Based on the painting, cartoons (scale drawings) were prepared by the weavers, mounted behind the loom and the colour fields traced on the warp. Wool was dyed in 300 different colours and threads mixed together to obtain thousands of colours. The tapestry was woven in wool, on a cotton and linen support. The finished tapestry is held up with velcro fastening. The architecture of Parliament House, and the artworks and materials inside the building, are intended to reflect the Australian landscape and emphasise the importance of the physical environment in shaping Australian values. The Great Hall tapestry has provided a striking backdrop for many important ceremonial and community events at Parliament House. 8 THE ART OF BRINGING THE ARTS TO CANBERRA
Great Hall Tapestry (1984 - 88) Artist: Arthur BOYD (1920 - 1999) Interpretation and execution: Victorian Tapestry Workshop (est. 1976) Wool, mercerised cotton and linen weft on a seine warp, 9m x 20m. Reproduced courtesy of Courtesy of Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, A.C.T. GOING FURTHER •• Research Arthur Boyd’s life and work, and that of others in the Boyd family. •• Research the details of the design of Parliament House and its symbolic places—the forecourt which refers to the period before the arrival of Europeans. The foyer, Great Hall and the Members’ Hall also have symbols in their design. •• Find out more about tapestry (which has a long tradition of telling stories from history, e.g. the Bayeux Tapestry). How have the techniques used in making tapestries changed over time? Of special significance, in this context of looking at tapestries, is the work of Valerie Kirk, Head of Textiles at ANU School of Art. She was a weaver at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, earlier in her career. See www.valeriekirktapestry.com. Many of her works are on display around Canberra, for example, at ANU’s University House. •• Follow the progress of the Canberra Community Centenary Tapestry, which is an 18-month community arts project to create a large scale woven tapestry to celebrate Canberra’s 100 th birthday in 2013, www.canberra100communitytapestry. com. This project has been funded by the Community Centenary Initiatives Fund, with support from the Legislative Assembly of the ACT and the Textiles Workshop at the Australian National University School of Art. The finished tapestry, along with the smaller tapestries, will be exhibited in the Legislative Assembly of the ACT in late 2013. After the exhibition, the large scale Canberra Centenary Community Tapestry will become part of the Assembly’s extensive and significant art collection, which recognises the breadth and depth of artistic talent and interests in the region. •• Visit Parliament House where the paintings (canvases) as well as the tapestry can be seen. As mentioned earlier, the paintings by William Lister Lister and Penleigh Boyd are also on display at Parliament House; discover the range of timbers used in Parliament House. •• Research the ongoing work of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, now known as the Australian Tapestry Workshop. •• Design and make a tapestry for a significant event in a school’s life. Could the school commission such a work? SECTION 1 9
Page 1 and 2: THE ART OF BRINGING THE ARTS TO CAN
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS SECTION 1 Introduction: th
Page 5 and 6: THE EDUCATIONAL LANDSCAPE THE CENTE
Page 7 and 8: GOING FURTHER ART CHALLENGES OUR PE
Page 9: GOING FURTHER MacDonald’s paintin
Page 13 and 14: Image courtesy of Ben Wrigley GOING
Page 15 and 16: GOING FURTHER •• Research the l
Page 17 and 18: It’s time. MOST SECRET PRIME T IM
Page 19 and 20: of petroglyphs (art etched onto the
Page 21 and 22: THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM: ENGLISH
Page 23 and 24: FOUR BEAUTIFUL SEASONS, TWELVE FANT

THE ART - Canberra 100

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