What should one know about an object before one can enjoy it, let alone understand it? Is art a private, intellectual game that requires learning, or does it delve deeper into the haptic emotional world? Can one merely feel art or does one need knowledge of the artist and the intent of the concept before one can participate in and enjoy the piece; ‘appreciate it’? Is one wrong to be confused, unimpressed with what can be seen to be an abstruse, obscure, perplexing exercise?
The winner of the design prize that ‘reimagined’ Robin Boyd’s house in tapestry has been announced: see – https://architectureau.com/articles/2025-winner-of-tapestry-design-prize-announced/. Troy Emery with Cox Architecture won with a piece woven by Saffron Gordon, named enigmatically Longing (Camilla). The jury justified its choice with the usual fanfare: The work reimagines the potential of tapestry as an art form: its materiality, tactility and artistic nature. The result is a piece that could only exist as tapestry, not painting or print. Interestingly, the jury did not mention that the work could not exist as a sculpture. Why? Maybe it is, in low relief?
The work was a puzzle. What was one looking at? The jurors' blurb was not useful, reading as something like hyped, artistic puffery: Thoughtfully positioned within Walsh Street’s living room, its location, scale and textures harmonise with its architectural context, engaging with the materials and tones of Boyd’s design. Yet strangely, one was eventually able to make some sense of the piece, but only once the work had been explained and the house had been seen seen. Here, in Boyd’s residence, one was confronted with cables, experiment, boldness, and clever invention, the very same things the woven work espoused in threads.
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Initially one saw a pile of threads massed as a bundle woven into a black background, and made no sense of the presentation other than as a ‘modern’ weaving. One has come to expect anything in art these days. The quantity of dangling filaments was exuberant, impossibly overdone, oozing out to an array of clipped lengths lapped as fringes in varying shades of pink, with an underlying skirt of threads. The majority of the fibres were long, oversized, reaching the floor and resting on it as overlying tresses. The darkest hues seemed to terminate in a globular mass, the only somewhat defined piece of the mess - (remember the idea in Catch 22 of being able to make sense of a mess) - being more identifiable as something than the remainder of the hanging filaments that appeared as a flowing muddle, an ill-defined and amorphous shambles that seemed to have been combed to tidy things up a little for presentation, like unruly hair. One was left puzzled, wondering what to do with this voluminous mass of hanging coloured trailings that were strangely presented as a weaving, a tapestry, when they looked like anything but being so organised and arranged into the cohesion of an intertwining. This was the work of a sculptor and a firm of architects, woven by a master weaver, and had just been given the top award by a jury that one assumed had been selected for its experience. The work must have something about that was worthy of recognition. What was one missing? It is a familiar question these days when viewing art.
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The artwork/tapestry/sculpture/invention appeared as a vague jumble of differently hued fibres of varying lengths, awkwardly amassed as a bulky draping from a woven black carpet/wall hanging, all nicely fringed with its exposed warp holding the black weft surrounds. One could make sense of this conventional structural rigour, but the mayhem of the hanging threads left one wondering what the bundling of tassels was all about. The work held something of the image and visual energy of the Niagara falls in a way that confused, making no sense of the acclaimed wonder called Longing. Even this strange naming of the tapestry was not helpful as a guide: Longing (Camilla). How? Why? The only Camilla who was known had a history of awkward royal references that seemed askew and irrelevant in this context. Surely the work was not pretentious enough to be dedicated to the queen?
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One started to read to learn more. The jury blurb seemed to read as a lot of over the top, indulgent, arty bull - using H.W. Flower’s Modern English Usage as a guide for the word for nonsensical, exaggerated statements rather than the cruder bullshit that the word seems to have developed into: see - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit. The explanatory words only added to the frustrated confusion. Knowing that the Troy Emery and Cox Architecture’s tapestry ‘Longing (Camilla)’ is a two-dimensional interpretation of Emery’s 2024 sculpture ‘Lupa,’ an amorphous animal-like companion; which, In the domestic site of Walsh Street, Camilla echoes Boyd’s family life with their pet cat of the same name with The excess tendrils of yarn drip(ping) down out of the plane of the woven surface towards the floor, stretching the silhouette of the animal figure and evoking emotion and memory, was helpful in one way, but it all seemed to read as pompous, elitist nonsense, drivel drawn from the private preferences of the artists’ explained way of seeing; the preferred interpretation applied to a pile of threads.
The work was supposed to relate to Robyn Boyd's, (not Boid – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2018/08/robyn-boid-egg-cellence-in-mind-growing.html), Walsh Street house, so this project was looked up. One recalled it as the cable house, Boyd's own home now standing as a museum maintained by the Robin Boyd Foundation - $25 - $45 per person for a guided tour/event. One perused the place: classic 1950s, with Mies’s sparse array of self-consciously placed furnishings of the period, with large volumes stepping across the site under a roof slung above, supported on steel cables that one usually associated with being a part of a suspension bridge.
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The discovery that this representation of Lupa, ‘bracketed Camilla,’ referenced Boyd's cat of the same ‘bracketed’ name - not Lupa but Camilla - with Lupa being a previous sculpture 3D by the artist Troy Emery, allowed one to understand something of this work. The Longing, Lupa, (Camilla) weaving was said to be a ‘2D’ variation of this earlier Emery sculptural work. This was looked up: see – https://share.google/images/hrziVRc0IVJbjtOmn.
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One wondered what the architects on the team had to do with this odd concept that seemed to be all about a recreation in 2D version - really? - of a previous Troy Emery concept for an animal form looking like the lovable Magic Roundabout dog, Dougal; a dog/cat-animal-like form expressed in an earlier work as a mass of yellow ochre hanging threads. This work brought to mind the odd blue sculpture of another strange animalistic sculpture that had been in the news recently, with problem eyes and fragile paint: see - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW1R8WUgazs.
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Did the architects, the two photographed as the Cox team along with the sculptor and the weaver - Left to right: Saffron Gordon, Marc Raszewski (Cox Architecture), Troy Emery and Rachael Halstead (Cox Architecture) - decide on the cat reference story to help give some relevance to the artist’s self-referential idea that seemed to have no relationship to Boyd or his house? What was the shared effort here? Did the rules demand that an architect be involved? What did the architects do? What did the master weaver think of the piece - the long or the short version?
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Apparently the jury said that the work looked splendid on the wall of a room of the house - which one? - and that it expressed the qualities of the place; re-interpreted or ‘reimagined’ them. Mmmm.
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One tried to transpose the piece to this phantom context and slowly a feeling for place and work converged. One could see that Boyd’s place was dominated by the ‘hanging threads’ of the cabled roof, a draped hammock of a surface slung above an artfully arranged set of furnished levels that must have been avant-garde for its time as an exhibit, a theatre for living that remains an architectural exhibit today, a museum; an example of how an architect 'lived' - or does one say performed? How does one envisage everyday life in this place? Where is the messy ad hoc piecing together of pieces of habitation that come with its array of ordinary mixed emotions and issues exhibited as detritus and clutter? We can admire the place as a pretence, a vision of a possible, ‘maybe’ visionary life and living, a whimsical dream, but is this like watching a play, a stage set? Is it merely an artful self-conscious assemblage for appraisal and acclaim, to be admired for its courage and bespoke invention that can be praised in a slew of pompous words? Is this the connection to the tapestry?
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Finally, eventually, one could see how the mysterious Longing/Lupa/Camilla related to this place. The work held an intrigue in the self-conscious referencing of not only the assertive boldness of the house’s gesture, but also touching on that the much-loved house cat, dragging sentiment into longing. What more could one want? One could finally appreciate why the jury chose the work – everyone loves family cats in some way; but one is left puzzled: does an artwork need a lengthy analysis in order to be 'seen;’ understood; appreciated? Why did it take such an effort to get to this position from the viewing of the initial ‘mess’ of dangling, Dougal threads?
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One recalls traditional art which was symbolic, rooted in references that stood as an essential base for beauty. Any deviation from these notions could not be beautiful; copying was better than personal invention. One did not have to know these complete details in order to perceive the wonder and sense the relevance. With Lupa 2D (low relief?) – well, Longing (Camilla) - there was a coherent story/referencing that knitted, wove the work and the place together - (pun intended); but there was no ad hoc wonder to be comprehended, only the lingering wondering, puzzling, asking the question as to why such a quantity of thread was self-consciously bundled together to make this cotton ooze, a so-called 2D form that obviously was 3D, into a flood of expectorant-type tresses, or tendrils, stretching all concepts of weaving in the same way that Boyd stretched the concept of structure beyond the perceptions and necessities of the everyday to create an amazement, a bespoke exhibit worthy of an award. Walsh Street was the winning nomination for the RAIA (Victoria) 25 year Award in July 2006, and also the winner of the National 25 year Award, announced in October 2006. One can appreciate how, unlike Seidler’s mother’s house, this Boyd house is a part of suburbia, but it conceals itself cleverly, adopting the true intentions for isolation and originality embedded in Modernism, with its ambitions for singularity: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-rose-seidler-house-private-visions.html.
We really should not have to labour so much in order to see a work of art. Tradition identified both esoteric and exoteric qualities in a work: those internal and the external qualities held integrally in one work symbolically, with one aspect being private, the other public. Our indigenous art has the same quality: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html. Art today seems to have become merely clever personal whims embodied in a mystery nothingness that has to be decoded before one can 'see'. Wittgenstein called it 'seeing as' and used the 'duck-rabbit' as the example for 'ways of seeing' as John Berger called it. The viewer is left to somehow interpret the work, with its intent becoming obvious only once one learns the facts: who, what, and why, and accepting these as a guide to perception and understanding to locate the desired interpretation. There is no rich immediacy that lingers as a part of the whole that is just a personal preference to be comprehended in the seeing of things MY way, be this be the vision of the artist, the jury, or the nonchalant viewer who is mocked as ignorant if any negative or disparaging comment is made about how the piece is seen, perhaps suggesting that:
"It looks like waste being dumped;" or, of the house, "like a living space under a bridge" - and one thinks of fly tipping and homelessness.
“Crude, foolish, uninformed idiot!”
“Maybe a woven pink poles?"
"Uh?"
"A Victorian lady in distress?"
“Oh! No! Cretin! This is ART! A two-dimensional interpretation of Lupa; art inspired by art reimagining the potential of tapestry as an art form: its materiality, tactility and artistic nature.”
“Did you say ‘loopy’?”
"It's a cat; well, cattish-like."
"Ya kidding?"
"It references Boyd's kitten."
"Oh; Like this chap?"
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THE ARTICLE
Winner of 2025 Tapestry Design Prize announced
The 2025 winner of the Tapestry Design Prize has been revealed, transforming Robin Boyd’s iconic Walsh Street house into a canvas for contemporary textile art and reimagining architecture through texture, colour and the craft of weaving.
by InteriorsAU Editorial
Artist Troy Emery and Cox Architecture have been awarded first prize in the Tapestry Design Prize (TDP), presented by the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW).
This year’s prize focuses on one of Australia’s most significant modern homes – Boyd House II / Walsh Street designed by Robin Boyd. Since its inception in 2015, the TDP has been a celebration of the meeting point between architecture, design and contemporary textile art – a space where creative disciplines entwine and reimagine how tapestry can transform built environments.
This year’s iteration invited designers and architects to respond to the intimate domestic spaces of Boyd’s Walsh Street residence. From over 150 applications, five finalists were selected, each interpreting a different room within the house. Their proposals were handwoven by ATW’s master weavers, translating digital sketches and architectural concepts into rich, tactile surfaces of wool and cotton.
The resulting works — five distinct tapestries, totalling 1,487 hours of weaving and over 39 kilometres of yarn — were unveiled during a special exhibition at Walsh Street on 14–16 November 2025.
Troy Emery and Cox
Architecture’s tapestry Longing (Camilla) is a
two-dimensional
interpretation of Emery’s 2024 sculpture Lupa,
an amorphous animal-like companion. In the domestic site of Walsh
Street, Camilla echoes Boyd’s family life with their pet cat of the
same name. The excess tendrils of yarn drip down out of the plane of
the woven surface towards the floor, stretching the silhouette of the
animal figure and evoking emotion and memory.
Commenting on the winner’s work, the jury – consisting of Kennedy Nolan principal Patrick Kennedy, Nexus Designs director Sally Evans and InteriorsAu editor Cassie Hansen – said the piece was selected for it “authentic innovation and deep resonance with Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street house.”
“The work reimagines the potential of tapestry as an art form: its materiality, tactility and artistic nature. The result is a piece that could only exist as tapestry, not painting or print. Thoughtfully positioned within Walsh Street’s living room, its location, scale and textures harmonise with its architectural context, engaging with the materials and tones of Boyd’s design. Evoking the domestic intimacy of the site, the work draws inspiration from the home’s former resident cat, Camilla. Distinctive, conceptually rich and masterfully realised by weaver Saffron Gordon, this tapestry represents a significant and contemporary evolution of the medium,” said the jury.
The winning team received $5,000, while all finalists receive $1,000, along with a People’s Choice Award to be decided by public vote.
The 2025 finalists were:
Jack MacRae, Wilson Architects
Troy Emery and Cox Architecture
N’arwee’t Professor Carolyn Briggs AM and Greenshoot
Yvette Coppersmith and Anouska Milstein, A.mi
Mouriya Senthilkumar and Ian Tsui
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