Irene Davies Tapestry Award 2026
The biennial Kate Derum and Irene Davies International Tapestry Awards celebrate creativity and excellence in contemporary tapestry.
(Australian Tapestry Workshop)
Earlier this year I was lucky enough to have a month long artist residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. Since then, tapestry has been a growing presence in my creative practice.
So, I was thrilled to have my tapestry Fragment, sky/trees/light shortlisted for the 2026 Irene Davies Award, an award that celebrates and supports emerging tapestry artists within the first five years of their tapestry practice.
The Award Announcement and Exhibition Opening evening will take place on Wednesday 28 October, 5.30pm-7.30pm at the Australian Tapestry Workshop 262–266 Park Street, South Melbourne. All are welcome.
The exhibition will be open until January 16th 2027.
Irene Davies Tapestry Award
Artist Statement
Much of my work comes from collected impressions of nature.
The meditative act of making allows me to reflect on this embodied experience, encompassing the multiplicities of the natural world.
I investigate how colour, form and surface work together, and how thread, weft or paint can create varying densities, luminosities and rhythms. Through an amplified textural and optical language, colour is felt, as much as it is seen.
The colours in this tapestry have emerged from memories of a particular intensity of sunset light that turns eucalyptus trees a burning orange against blue sky.
In contrast to this experience, which in the moment felt like an expansion of self, this small work acts like a fragment of the memory; a splinter of sky and trees and light.
Formally, the interplay of colour creates a sense of transparency and layering of pattern, an interweaving of separate elements, coalescing into one visual rhythm. The blended wefts allow for an optical colour complexity within a limited palette and the geometric gradients of the triangular shapes are contrasted with the more intuitive curved forms.
As a new tapestry maker, the making of this work also feels small but large. In terms of development, there has been a real shift in managing the technical aspects of tapestry (tension, selvedge, building forms, blending colours) but also in finding an authentic way to work within the language of tapestry, in my own voice.
(Claire Mooney 2026)