Windows No. 4

Ready to hang - tapestry has been mounted onto stretched black fabric on a wooden frame.
Total dimensions 33cm x 33cm x 2cm deep

FINALIST, Irene Davies Emerging Artist Award 2017

I have based the ‘Windows’ series on x-rays from various sources. They invite the viewer to peer into the very core of what makes up our identity. It shows us from the absolute inner-core of our being – something that we cannot fake, airbrush or Photoshop. It is a ‘secret portrait’, laying bare all that is true within us. The medium of hand woven tapestry further imbues the work with a sense of humanity through the many hours of tactile, hands-on work required to render these pieces.

Follow

Michelle Driver is a South Australian artist working exclusively in handwoven tapestry. Her practice is grounded in slow labour, repetition, and material discipline, approaching tapestry as a rigorous studio practice rather than a decorative craft.

Her work is shaped by queerness, neurodiversity, and lived experience of trauma, and often draws on gothic aesthetics and unsettling narrative. Through weaving, she explores shadow, memory, and the tension between obedience and refusal, revealing beauty within what is overlooked or difficult to name.

Driver’s work has been recognised nationally, including winning the 2016 Port Pirie Art Prize and inclusion in Radical Textiles at the Art Gallery of South Australia.