Miniature tapestry, 'Jazz Singer', designed by Polly Courtin and woven by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne, 1989.

Ahand woven Gobelin tapestry depicting a female head in profile. The head is woven in yellow with orange and red hair on a predominantly blue and green background covered with small geometric shapes.

Purchased. Registered File number 1994/1388.

Historical significance: This series of miniature tapestries was created by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop as a way of widening access to and ownership of their work. A number of artists, such as Stephen Benwell, the ceramic artist, agreed to collaborate on the project. Several of them spent time at the Workshop as artists in residence.
This project differed from the usual large scale long-term work of the Workshop and provided individual, short-term and intimate challenges for the weavers.

The Victorian Tapestry Workshop, established by the Government of Victoria in 1976, has an international reputation for the freshness, vitality and technical excellence of its hand-woven tapestries. The majority of the Workshop's tapestries are large-scale commissions, for display in venues such as arts complexes, schools and universities, corporate foyers and boardrooms. Between 1983 and 1988 the Workshop collaborated with Australian artist Arthur Boyd to produce a monumental tapestry for permanent display in the new Parliament House n Canberra. There has always been a demand from individual clients eager to own small examples of work and, in order to make their tapestries more widely available, the Workshop put together a collection of specially designed small tapestries to be woven in limited editions. Designs were commissioned from a number of Australian artists, several of whom spent time with the weavers as artists in residence.

Reason For Production: Exhibition

T.873-1994