The Australian Tapestry Workshop (formerly the Victorian Tapestry Workshop) was established in 1976, following two years of planning and research on the part of its founding patrons, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and Lady Joyce Delacombe. It is the only centre of its kind in Australia, and one of the very few in the world that are able to undertake the weaving, by hand, of large-scale, contemporary tapestries for architectural locations. With an emphasis on collaboration with living artists and architects, the Workshop facilitates an understanding of tapestry as an innovative and experimental practice rather than just a traditional, technical, and creatively-subservient skill. Over its 45 years of operation, ATW weavers have created more than 500 tapestries in collaboration with artists including Brook Andrew, Sally Smart, Reg Mombassa, TextaQueen, John Olsen, David Noonan, Janet Laurence, Guan Wei, Nell, and Ginger Riley Manduwalawala; and from designs based on original works in various mediums including painting, photography, watercolour and collage. Among the ATW's many major public works are Sally Smart's Eye Desire (2011), commissioned for the Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne; The games children play by Robert Ingpen, commissioned in 2009 in honour of Dame Elizabeth Murdoch's support of Melbourne’s Royal Children's Hospital; the colossal tapestry designed by Arthur Boyd for the Great Hall at Parliament House, Canberra; Jørn Utzon's Homage to Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach (2003) for the Sydney Opera House; the series of tapestries designed by Roger Kemp for Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria's St. Kilda Road building; and the seven-metre-wide tapestry, also by Robert Ingpen, created to mark the Melbourne Cricket Club's sesquicentenary. ATW tapestries are held in corporate and private collections here and overseas, and in major public collections including those of the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian War Memorial and the National Library of Australia. Currently, there are ATW tapestries on display at nine Australian Embassies around the world, and in 2020 Kaantju/Umpila artist Naomi Hobson was commissioned to design a tapestry for the Australian Embassy to Indonesia in Jakarta. The Workshop also provides resources for weavers, maintains a program of exhibitions and site visits, and in 2015 it instituted the international Tapestry Design Prize for Architects.
