A woven masterpiece of colour

12 Dec 2024

Brick Bay’s winning folly Femme-ly Velues was created by all-women team Claire Ford, Elise Cautley and Jennifer Gao. Whether you view it from across the lake at Brick Bay or stand beneath its frames, Femme-ly Velues, the newest addition to the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail, stands out for its clever construction and vibrant Resene colour palette. 

It’s the whimsy of Brick Bay Folly competition winners Claire Ford, Elise Cautley and Jennifer Gao of Yellowhammer Services, Architecture HDT and Jack McKinney Architects who have reimagined the art of weaving using recycled and reused pinus radiata, equine canvas, stainless steel tension wire, steel rod and fixings and Resene paint. 

“We saw an opportunity to really exercise and further our understanding of the craft that our mothers taught us, which was weaving, knitting, stitching, sewing. And we want to put a big emphasis on how thankful we are that that is the foundation of our design education,” says Elise Cautley.  

On top of that, it was a really great way of exploring colour.  

The winners, and skilful hands, behind Femme-lyVelues – (from left) Elise Cautley, Claire Ford and Jennifer Gao. Image by Carolyn Enting.  

“We really wanted to explore the concept of joy and how craft and language could be emphasised through colour,” says Cautley. “We've got pinks that really talk a lot about the kind of feminism or Barbie-fication in the public sphere, then we've got the addition of blue, which talks about the wider ideas of feminism through the LGBTQIA+ community. And the yellow adds to that as well. The purple is the official colour of International Women's Day, which adds an extra element that really gives it some depth.” 

Taking their vision from concept to life required hundreds of hours of sanding and painting more than 100 wooden battens that make up the three giant looms, as well as hand-painting the canvas. 

They're also grateful that Resene champion art projects and the creative side of painting as well as the functional, protective side of painting. And for the brilliant spectrum they were able to capture. 

The colours they chose were Resene Studio, Resene XOXO, Resene Jordy Blue, Resene Bright Spark, Resene Colour Me Pink and Resene Toorak. Image by Sam Hartnett. 

“I don't think anyone else has the vibrance and the artistic vision, and the range of standard colours that they supply have such a broad spectrum of colour and they’ve really captured the joy that we were trying to communicate through the design,” says Claire Ford. 

The folly’s name, Femme-ly Velues, is a play on family values that goes back to matriarchal learning of where our weaving history comes from, as well as the feminine which speaks to the sisterhood of the all-women team. 

Each row of the looms resembles a line of stitching, threaded together tightly using a single metal rod, woven into the timber, and draped canvas that has been structurally strengthened with cables without compromising aesthetics. 

The cables hold the design’s form as well as provide strength in case a “seven-year-old decides that maybe he can jump in the middle of it”. 

What’s also impressive is that 50 per cent of the materials used to build the new folly were reused from the previous competition folly winner, The Nest. 

Femme-lyVelues – A small family of looms, huddled in the clearing. The base of the structure is knitted together using reclaimed timber from the previous folly competition winner The Nest, some re-sanded and adorned with lively pink, yellow, purple and blue – others left with the stain in-situ, to reference heirlooms passed down from the ancestral folly. Image by Sam Hartnett.  

The other way the project embraces sustainability was choosing compacted gravel foundations over concrete. Three 1.2-metre-deep holes, into which each of the six posts was cantilevered, led to the team having to compact 11 cubic metres of gravel into the foundations. 

This means when the time comes for the folly to be deconstructed the posts can be easily removed without disturbing the ground. 

Brick Bay co-owner Richard Didsbury describes the folly as “absolutely spectacular, fun, joyous” with “more colour than we've ever seen before at Brick Bay”. 

It is the ninth time that Brick Bay has commissioned young architects to design and build a folly, and a first for an all-women team. 

You can visit this folly and see it in its full colourful glory at Brick Bay.  

words Carolyn Enting 

design Claire Ford, Yellowhammer Services; Elise Cautley, Architecture HDT; Jennifer Gao, Jack McKinney Architects 

images Sam Hartnett and Carolyn Enting 

Published: 12 Dec 2024