Kay Lawrence

South Australian artist Kay Lawrence AM, is one of Australia's foremost tapestry artists. Born in Canberra in 1947 she moved to Adelaide in the early 1960s and from 1965-68 studied at the South Australian School of Art. From 1977-78 she studied tapestry weaving at the Edinburgh College of Art and returned to South Australia where she is now based working as an artist, writer and teacher.

Lawrence's art practice also includes installation and performance often using common domestic materials like buttons and string in her work, responding to matters of personal and community identity, and often exploring ideas of loss and connection through the materiality of textiles.

Lawrence’s practice in tapestry, on Peramangk land in the Adelaide Hills, has focused on concepts of feminism and materiality for several decades. Key tapestries include, Daughter, 1995–96, and Rant, 2002, 2009, and 2017 and the Women’s Suffrage Centenary Community Tapestries, 1993, for the South Australian Parliament, and the Women in Trade Unions banner with artist Elaine Gardner, 1985–87, for which Lawrence was both designer and contributor. The Women’s Suffrage Centenary Community Tapestries and Women in Trade Unions banner are on loan from the Parliament of South Australia and The Working Womens Centre, SA Collection, respectively.

Historically, weavers of tapestries worked to designs of others that were frequently based on paintings. The continued interest in this expensive and time-consuming medium of tapestry-weaving in the twentieth century coincided with a new development where artists created tapestries to their own designs. Lawrence produced the designs for her tapestries using a variety of sources such as her own photographs and drawings.

Did you know?

Kay Lawrence has had a distinguished career as an educator in the visual arts and is Emeritus Professor at the University of South Australia. She became the first woman appointed to head the South Australian School of Art in 2002

Kay Lawrence; photo: Michal Kluvanek.

Votes for Women and Equal Before the Law
Words by Kay Lawrence from Radical Textiles Catalogue.

Two tapestries hang, facing each other among portraits of former Premiers and Speakers, in the House of Assembly Chamber of the South Australian Parliament. Conceived by a bi-partisan group of women politicians, they were woven in public and were hung in the Chamber in 1994 to mark one hundred years of ground-breaking legislation in South Australia, legislation that gave women the right to vote and equality before the law. They can be understood as ‘radical’ in many senses of the word: they espouse the concept of equality, fundamental to a democratic society, and advocate political reform. Moreover, as textiles conceived and made by women, they insert women’s issues, women’s work and women’s textile practices into the patriarchal space of the parliament.

Collaboration is at the heart of their making and imagery, as it was in 1894, when women and men worked together to secure the right of women to vote and stand for election to the parliament.

Woven tapestry is a collaborative medium, and in the European tradition has long been used to commemorate important historic events and symbolise power and wealth. In contrast to these latter values, the tapestries, which were designed by me, were commissioned as a community-based project, led by artist Elaine Gardner, who with Lucia Pichler worked with a small group of volunteer weavers drawn from the community to weave two tapestries, in public. The people of South Australia were encouraged to participate by weaving ‘a pass’ and to contribute to the creation of works of art symbolising the foundation of democracy in an active and engaged citizenry. The tapestries were hung in the House of Assembly Chamber in 1994.

Votes for Women appropriates the Greek pillar and gold frame typical of portraits in the Chamber, but rather than focusing on one man, depicts three suffragists, Catherine Helen Spence, Mary Lee and Elizabeth Webb Nichols, above an image of the great petition of more than 11,000 signatures that informed the South Australian Parliament of the ‘absolute justice of giving women the franchise for both Houses of Parliament on the same terms as ... men’. The frame, cut to reveal a coiled Ngarrindjeri mat, suggests that the State of South Australia was itself imposed on unceded Aboriginal land. Facing off on the other side of the Chamber hangs Equal Before the Law. This less-orthodox tapestry presents a heterogeneous collection of images, pieced together like a patchwork quilt. The images refer to a raft of legislation passed by the South Australian Parliament in the twentieth century outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sex and marital status and giving women rights over their bodies and their children.

Hear more about these tapestries from Education Manager, Parliament House, Natalie Badcock. The works of art will be on loan to AGSA for the Radical Textiles exhibition from 23 November 2024 - 30 March 2025 after which time they will then return to Parliament House.

Parliament House Education Resources

The Women in Trade Unions banner

The Women in Trade Unions banner, was made between 1985 and 1987 and was designed by the South Australian artists Elaine Gardner and Kay Lawrence for the South Australian Women in Trade Unions Network.[ 1] Made in white, green and purple, the colours of the WSPU, the banner has as its centrepiece a cyanotype – a type of photographic image – and shows women marching with a banner bearing the text ‘CHILDCARE A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE’. The image, from a photograph taken during a May Day parade in 1986, is surrounded by swirling lavender ribbons. Interestingly, the artists substituted the wording on the original banner – WOMEN IN TRADES UNIONS – with the text demanding childcare. Directly above the image in this banner’s text is the original text, depicted in swirling embroidery. The labour historian Kathie Muir notes about this banner that, ‘the words also differ from the traditional banner content in that they appear in seven different languages (in the ribbons around the edge of the banner) and express the things that women do together as part of their organising for change’.[2] The banner is augmented with several subtle decorative devices, including embroidery on the dress of the figures at the centre and around the edge, details reflecting the often-invisible nature of work performed by women, while also linking back to the traditions of women’s needlework.

Words by Rebecca Evans from Radical Textiles Catalogue.

  1. Kathi Muir, ‘Feminism and representations of union identity in Australian union banners of the 1980s and early 1990s’, Labor History, November 2000, p. 104
  2. Ibid. pg. 105

Kay Lawrence, born Canberra, The Australian Capital Territory 1947, Daughter, 1995-96, Uraidla, South Australia, linen, wool, cotton, 194.5 x 141.0 cm, 160.0 x 16.0 cm (diam.) (rolled); South Australian Government Grant assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, 1997., Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © Kay Lawrence.

Daughter, 1994

In the 1990s, developed a particular interest in mother/daughter relationships. The figure in Daughter is based on a photograph taken by Lawrence of her daughter Ellie. In the tapestry this image, after being adapted into a drawing, is transformed into a much more general figure, which looms life-size through a background of text. The text is not especially easy to read and forms as much as a pattern as providing verbal clues to the work. The text is from the novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and reads as follows:

'[If] my mother was happy/ that day we did not/ know why and if she/ was sad the next/ we did not know/ why and if she was/ gone the next we/ did not know why/ it was as if she/ continually righted/ herself/ against some current/ that never ceased to/ pull. She swayed/ continuously like a thing/ in water and it was a/ graceful, a slow dance a/ sad and heady dance'.

Lawrence's skill as both a designer and weaver is clear in this work. She achieves a powerful effect by balancing the figure against the horizontal lines of words. Within a narrow colour palette she manages to achieve remarkable and subtle tonal variety in her weaving.

  • Take a moment to look at the Votes for Women and Equal Before the Law tapestries. What do you notice? Make a list of all the things you recognise and discuss what significance they have in telling the story of the following themes:
    • historical constitutional achievements
    • informing community about the obstacles which have been overcome
    • women's participation in the development of South Australia
    • celebration of all aspects of women's lives.
  • The basket weaving detail on the Votes for Women tapestry symbolises the presence of Aboriginal people in South Australia prior to colonisation, specifically the Ngarrindjeri people of the Lower Murray. A renowned expert in Ngarrindjeri basket weaving, is Yvonne Koolmatrie who makes both customary utilitarian objects, such as the Eel traps, as well as figurative contemporary sculptures such as fish, turtles, lizards, echidnas, and even a biplane and hot-air balloon. Through these woven sculptural works, Koolmatrie draws on her Ngarrindjeri cultural knowledge and responds to contemporary life. AGSA have a number of works by Koolmatrie in the collection. Find out more about Yvonne Koolmatrie with our Online Resource.
  • The silhouettes in Equal Before the Law depict the diversity of women's roles, occupations and activities. The hurdler symbolises the strength and energy needed to overcome barriers; the Tai-Kwondo figure conveys women's capacity for self-defence; the Shearer portrays women's important role in agriculture and the figure with loud-hailer represents women's leadership in political and industrial advocacy. The gardener with tree in fruit expresses the concept of growth and fertility. Take a photograph of yourself in a pose that communicates a quality you have. Use Photoshop to transform this image into a silhouette. Make sure your pose in demonstrating your action clearly so that it symbolises your value. Use this silhouette as a starting point for creating a work of art that responds to the idea of 'the world I want to live in'.
  • Research the suffragettes Catherine Helen Spence, Mary Lee and Elizabeth Webb Nichols. What is their legacy? Investigate other South Australian women who have had a positive impact on society or the environment throughout history. Create a work of art that pays tribute to this woman and their story of advocacy and change. You may like to select a momentous event in Australian history instead and commemorate this event using collage.