Woonona artist Diana Wood Conroy had put in call after call in a bid to track down a giant missing tapestry she had made in the 1970s. Subscribe now for unlimited access . Login or signup to continue reading You really couldn't miss it, she thought - it was 2.
7 by 2.7 metres, and it was needed for her major solo exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery . In was during the pandemic, when a renewed interest in the fibre arts had swept the country, that Wood Conroy decided it was the right time for a retrospective.
She and her husband, Paul Sharrad - also a retired UOW academic - were in the process of rounding up dozens of her kaleidoscopic pieces from public and private collections for the art show. But their search for Glory of the Lord - a massive corn-yellow tapestry commissioned by Menzies College at Macquarie University for $2500 in 1973 - was proving fruitless. The wall hanging had taken pride of place in the building's dining hall for some 30 years before it was removed around 2005 to make way for some mounted electronic devices and placed somewhere unknown to the current administration.
But Sharrad, a Fellow at UOW and self-appointed "chief research officer" of Wood Conroy's tapestry recovery operation, refused to give up. "He kept ringing up and talked to the current master of Menzies College," she said. "So the current master found out who had been the maintenance officer when the tapestry had come down and spoke to him.
"And he said, 'Oh, yes, that tapestry, we wrapped .
