The National Gallery appears to own all the Arthur Boyd tapestries in his series on St Francis and they are all on display together for the first time. There are 20 huge tapestries taken from "source images" 20x smaller and often enough monochrome, so the experience of the tapestries is something far beyond. They are supremely beautiful, detailed, each tapestry containing 4-8.5 million stitches, created by women working in shifts for years. The display ended with a little play-studio to see how all this was done. A video showed all manner of detail in the original drawings plotted and allocated colours and then intricately converted. There's something strange here, the modernist drawings, somewhat thrown together as is the modern way, creating such immense work for the female weavers. It hints to me the somewhat-somewhat-not jokey tag of mansplaining, but I guess you can't question the intentions and creativity of AB for a long-standing interest in the St Francis and St Clare. It's all detailed variation on colour schemes with occasionally contrasting colours, in faces or strangely in body hair, if I saw right, underarm and pubic both seemingly to be of interest. But the immensity and subtle faces and somewhat lost bodies and the accompanying stories are interesting. And also the chance to see it all in possible action as we left. I've visited the Cathedral in Assisi and the Giotto frescoes and St Francis' reconstructed Portiuncula down the hill and, as I remember, a nearby room with some history of St Clare, so lovely to recall somehow, even if this exhibition doesn't particularly remind me of the mediaeval story. As for these tapestries, they are a phenomenon and perhaps more respected that that bigger AB tapestry in the Great Hall at Parliament House with its excision for the (forgotten?) doors that must be obeyed.
Arthur Boyd art and tapestries were on display at the National Gallery of Australia.
