Monday 2 July 2012

BOURKE PLACE TAPESTRY

Built for AMP in 1991, Bourke Place was marketed as having the "timeless quality of a masterpiece". Almost two decades later, that timeless quality still places Bourke Place at the forefront of Melbourne's premium grade commercial office buildings.The quality of materials and finishes is evident throughout the development. Moreover, the high level of maintenance of the building over the building's commercial life has ensured that the quality of the original design has been maintained. There are a number of artworks on display here, but two of them in the foyer are particularly striking and well-suited to our Monday mural meme.

The first  is a tapestry woven in 1990 by the Australian Tapestry Workshop and called "Melbourne"  on a design by Murray Walker. It is 5 x 5.8 metres and the weavers were Grazyna Bleja, Tim Gresham, Sonja Hansen, Barbara Mauro, Andrea May and Hannah Rother.

In researching this project, artist Murray Walker looked to the first grid plan for Melbourne,drawn up to the specifications of Governor Bourke in 1837. This grid is the foundation of the ordered layout of Melbourne’s CBD in its current incarnation. The work’s juxtaposition of the old (the maps and the grid) and the new (the vivid colour of the grid and abstraction in the sky and landscape) leads the viewer to contemplate the development and transitions of the city of Melbourne. The mammoth scale of the tapestry also helps to generate a sense of the vast physical landscape that metropolitan Melbourne now occupies.

The second art work from 2004, is in glass and is called "Passage", created by artist Warren Langley. It illustrates the notion of "passing through" and represents the journey through life and towards enlightenment.

This post is part of the Monday Murals meme.











11 comments:

  1. What an awesome place, Nick!! I love the colorful murals and tapestries and your captures are superb as always! Thanks as always for the information you include! Hope you had a great weekend and that you're ready for a good!

    Sylvia

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  2. This looks amazing! I am so glad you find these beautiful places to share with us! The information is always so helpful!

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  3. You won't believe it but I was in this building last week and thought the tapestry would make a good post for Monday Mural. Beat me too it. Ha!

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  4. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Love both tapestry and glass, lucky spot to have two beautiful examples. Great shots!

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  5. I love that map. Maps are underrated art, I think.

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  6. Wonderful. Love the wisdom figures and their meaning. Thank you for the inspiration. Please have a good Tuesday.

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  7. Such beautiful artworks.

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  8. The tapestry is phenomenal. Not until you show us the very close-up shots could I see it is a woven piece rather than a painting, even though I knew it in advance. A wonderful image, so finely woven. Did Walker also render this image (maybe on a smaller scale) through a multiple copy process like etching? I can image many Melbourne-ites who would like to own one. Thank you for this contribution toMonday Mural.

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  9. Like Carolyn of ODP I am pleased you zoomed right in to show us the tapestry at macro level. It's an amazing piece of work. The fused glass Wisdom figures are an optimistic take on life as a journey toward enlightenment. Having just watched Paul Gilding's TED Talk The Earth is full today, I'm feeling a little less positive today about human's ability to pass the inevitable crisis we are headed to. :-)

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