Sue Walker (b. 1936), weaver and arts administrator, studied fine arts in Melbourne and began her professional career as a weaver in London. When she returned to Australia she started weaving classes at the Melbourne CAE and workshops at Melbourne and Monash universities. In 1976, when she had been weaving for about fifteen years, she took up an appointment as founding Director of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, which won its first international commission in the first months of its operation. Now the Australian Tapestry Workshop, it remains 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. Over its 46 years of operation, ATW weavers have created more than 500 tapestries in collaboration with many leading Australian artists, and from designs based on original works in various mediums including painting, photography, watercolour and collage. Sue Walker is shown in this photograph with a tapestry based on paintings by Richard Larter, in a photograph Lewis Morley took for POL to accompany a piece entitled 'Success looms for Victorian Tapestry Workshop'.
Gift of the artist 2003. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Lewis Morley Archive LLC
Lewis Morley (49 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
An interview with Victorian Tapestry Workshop artists Sue Walker and Christopher Pyett.
Magda Keaney speaks with Lewis Morley about his photographic career and the major retrospective of his work on display at the NPG.
