In May 2020, Weaving Futures gave 15 contemporary artists from around Australia the unique opportunity to develop concepts for contemporary tapestry, nurturing their professional development and creativity during an extraordinarily challenging time. Through re-imagining our usual commissioning process, an inspiring portfolio of ‘loom ready’ tapestry designs emerged — opening up the possibility for these artists to work with the ATW in the future.

In 2021, support for Weaving Futures from Creative Victoria and the Playking Foundation brought tapestry designs by artists Atong Atem, Troy Emery, Eugenia Lim and Hayley Millar Baker onto our looms. ATW weavers Pamela Joyce, Emma Sulzer, Tim Gresham, and Amy Cornall collaborated with these artists, working at the forefront of Australian contemporary art practice.

Eugenia Lim, a Melbourne-based artist of Chinese–Singaporean descent, works across video, performance and installation exploring how national identities divide and bond our globalised world.

The 'Future Fossils (Old Tjikko)' tapestry designed by Lim and woven by Tim Gresham fuses internet stock imagery, archival analogue photographs and a 3D marble render of a 9,500-year-old spruce tree to present an archive of an expanding virtual present. Lim created her tapestry design during Melbourne’s first COVID-19 lock-down in 2020 — a time when she felt increasingly confined to the digital. Thinking beyond her (and our) present, Lim envisioned a future when not only nature becomes fossilised, but so too do ideas of oppression, capitalism and surveillance.

The prominent vertical forms present in Lim’s design enabled Gresham to establish strong colour relationships from the tapestry’s beginning. Gresham used a fine #12 warp at 3.5 warps per cm, with five strands of ATW wool, and sometimes cotton, on each bobbin. The main challenges in weaving 'Future Fossils (Old Tjikko)' were capturing the intricate detail around the edges of the spruce tree and translating the flat tones of the digital print into mixed tapestry wefts.

Future Fossils (Old Tjikko) is generously supported by the Playking Foundation and Creative Victoria.