In 2021, The Australian Tapestry Workshop wove explorative samples for Ground Under Repair’s Tapestry Design Prize for Architects 2021 winning entry ‘Time Shouts’.

For commission enquiries please contact the Australian Tapestry Workshop.

‘Time Shouts’ tells the story of the period of time between present day to the break-up of the ancient Gondwanan continent. This part of Australia is often referred to by Geologists as the Tasmanides, but its exact location and even its existence is contested. It could be said that the eastern boundary of this tapestry is the mythical coastline of Gondwana.

This is the youngest part of Australia and came into existence in the last million or so years. Another perspective is that it arrived 4 billion years late. It takes its current shape after the collision of several microcontinents. These Jurassic travellers (shown in the brighter flourishes along the present-day coastline) bumped into the old coastline of Gondwana, and with great song and dance disrupted the ocean floor, forming faults, folds, and volcanic eruptions. This is a young, volatile and still active part of our continent. 

Aboriginal dialects were overlaid onto this unsettled juvenile landscape to examine their relationship. The results evidence a culture that fundamentally understands the ground and its behaviour over time. ‘Time Shouts’ presents over 60,000 years of respectful custodianship in a clear unarguable form. At a time when the natural ecosystems of our continent are disappearing due to collective ignorance, we could question what and how we build. ‘Time Shouts’ calls time out; the answers hide in plain sight.

Colour plays a decisive role in the development of the tapestry design. A provocative shift to change the way we think about ground and water. The oceans and rivers are pink. Blue, the colour usually attributed to water, is the colour of the youngest sedimentary ground. The younger the ground, the darker the blue. This flies in the face of geological convention, but these maps convey cultural, not economic value. This inversion was a deliberate attempt to key into, and challenge traditional mapping representations; blue representing more fluid behaviour and pink being more mystical. 

Like the geological maps, there are inconsistencies between maps of Indigenous Australian groups and languages. This mapping doesn’t claim to depict the exact location of either geology or culture, it’s intent is to reveal the relationship between the two. Boundaries between different Indigenous culture and languages are not depicted by lines, but by a loose spray and woven in a metallic thread. The HI-VIZ yellow lines highlight faults and illustrate the structural behaviour of the ground over time. In the tapestry, they may continue beyond the edge, as if this part of Australia has been ripped away not come away cleanly. It was also an attempt to give a perceptual tactile hierarchy to the different elements regardless of all being made from the same thread.

‘Time Shouts’ is a banner of hope that could foreground some important conversations about the way we occupy ground through time. As architects we should take the time to understand the story of the continent we are pouring footings into.

Dr. Emma Jackson is the founder of Ground Under Repair. Emma is the Program Manager of the Bachelor of Architectural Design at RMIT University. She completed her PhD titled Everywhen; dirty algorithms to agitate a more appropriate occupation of Australia, at RMIT in 2019. Emma has worked for award-winning practices, including Lyons, ARM Architecture, John Wardle Architects, and Kerry Hill Architects, and running her practice Emma Jackson Architects. Riley Pelham-Thorman and Abigail Li Shin Liew are Masters students at RMIT Architecture and are aspiring geo-cultural-architects at Ground Under Repair. Eilidh Ross undertook some initial geological cultural mapping at GUR following graduation from RMIT Architecture in 2020.