Dean Bowen, Suburbanology, Victorian Tapestry Workshop, 1995
Summary
In 1995, the City of Melbourne commissioned printmaker and sculptor Dean Bowen to design an artwork for completion by weavers from the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, now known as the Australian Tapestry Workshop. ‘Suburbanology’ is the result of that fruitful collaboration, a large Gobelin-style tapestry in hand-dyed wools commissioned for exhibition in the Melbourne Town Hall and now hanging in the foyer of Council House 1. Since 1976, the tapestry workshop, the only such studio of its kind in Australia, has worked with many notable artists to create unique hand-woven textiles such as this for public and private collections.
‘Suburbanology’ is a wonderfully whimsical take on the structures and landscapes that determine modern living for most Australians, the majority of whom dwell in the suburbs and townships that dot the perimeter of our island nation. Through a limited palette and flattened perspective – both bird’s eye and cross-sectional – a commuting culture emerges, in which the home is the heart of existence. The home is the place from which we depart and return in our efforts to be both socially engaged and personally anchored. There is a lightness but poignancy to this meditation on modern life; like a Leunig cartoon, it is deceptively naïve, its open and direct aesthetic revealing some home truths about the universality of modern living.
