Sarah Lake Architects

THIRD PRIZE WINNER

‘Concrete Tapestry’

The visual textural qualities of tapestry are akin to those of the bush hammered concrete of the original National Gallery building where the work will hang. The visual roughness, subtle colour variation, stippling, and texture are to be replicated. Where the tapestry begins and ends is ambiguous – a woven concrete wall. The tapestry is a low relief of the wall it hangs on, an interpretation and a visual illusion. It is a contrast between the softness of the tapestry and the roughness of the concrete it replicates.

The wall is in a state of destruction, at the centre is a hole. This exposes the construction and roughness of the wall but also reveals what may sit beyond, a revealing of the original geometry of the gallery which appears like a continuous, expansive pattern. The imagery of destruction is incongruous with the nature of the gallery space. It questions what this destruction could mean - is it a positive or negative change to the space? Is it a process of regeneration, preservation, renovation? Or something more sinister like that of war - a reference to places such as Syria whose cities had all the luxuries of a modern country that were quickly dismantled, now unrecognizable through war, where we disengage as the representation of the cities seem distant and unrelatable.