When she set about choosing a home in Canberra, Australia, weaver Brenda Goggs had a simple list of requirements. She wanted a place that would allow her to easily alter the floor plan, with the right balance of living, dining and sleeping areas, as well as enough space to house the loom she uses to create her tapestries. She eventually settled on a three-bedroom ‘ex-govie’ – a former government-built house erected in the 1980s to provide for those relocating to the city for public-service roles. The building’s rectangular shape accommodated for Brenda’s vision, and she wasted no time knocking down walls and rearranging the layout, transforming it into more of a one-bedroom apartment – complete with her loom in the living room.
Brenda has lived in Canberra for most of her adult life, having moved to the city initially to attend university. Years later, she returned to higher education as a mature student at art school, initially enrolling in painting. ‘During orientation, I visited the textile studio and decided right then and there that I wanted to pursue textiles instead,’ she says, reflecting on a moment of serendipity that would lead to a 25-year career in tapestry-weaving. This, however, wasn’t her first encounter with the craft. Growing up, her mother had a large floor loom, but Brenda thought it looked so boring that she had no interest in threading the reed and the like. ‘It’s ironic that I ended up in tapestry weaving,’ she admits. While she acknowledges that the warping process can be a bit tedious, she confesses she never actually found it all that problematic.
The flexible layout of Brenda’s home allows her to adapt it to her needs, while its compact size means she’s able to fill the space with her work. She doesn’t hesitate to paint over things either. ‘I went to Charleston many years ago, and that made me realise you can do whatever you want with paint – even house paint,’ she says. ‘If something stands still long enough, I’ll paint it.’ Every inch of the space is a canvas for her: a sliver of wall between two doorways bears a hand-painted homage to Gustav Klimt, the kitchen floor features a painted rug with William Morris-inspired florals and the dining table has been spread with her recreation of a Matisse still-life.
As for colour, tertiary tones appear frequently throughout her interiors, though she admits to a deep yearning for green. ‘Australian greens are very muted and greyish, with blue undertones. My heart longs for vibrant emerald,’ she shares, explaining that unless there’s been a downpour, Canberra lacks lush, verdant hues. It’s not just the absence of this specific shade that she finds frustrating about the Australian landscape; it’s also the intense glare of the unadulterated sunlight. Happily, the foliage she planted around her home helps to shield her windows, softening the rays that reach her indoors.
Despite what one might think given all the attention to detail in her home, Brenda Goggs insists that she tries not to overthink the decorating process. In fact, she doesn’t really consider it decorating at all. ‘To me, decoration suggests something planned in a deliberate, conscious way – something meant to fit into a specific spot. While I do place things with intention, it’s more about how things feel, how they interact. It’s not about surface treatment; it’s more integral than that.’ It’s not about competition either. Some might feel overstimulated by the abundance of colours, textures and objects in the space – and you can only really take in half the room’s effect at any one time – but she insists this abundance is a positive thing. ‘It means I can have an Australian tapestry behind me and a Chinese piece on the other wall: they converse with each other, in their own way.’ Sometimes her treasures sit side by side, while other times they challenge one another, but these points of dialogue add life to the home.
What with all her works on the place – from making structural changes to accommodate her loom, creating painted tapestries and rugs on its surfaces and planting a perimeter of foliage to provide just the right amount of shade – I jokingly tell Brenda she now couldn’t possibly consider giving up this little rectangular home. She laughs at the thought, reflecting on her years living in her ‘perfect’ ex-govie. ‘Why would I ever leave?’
For more information about Brenda Goggs’s weaving work, visit weavingaustralia.com
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