The Australian Coat of Arms has been depicted by different artists throughout Parliament House, offering a variety of interpretations of the iconic kangaroo and emu. The presence of the Coat of Arms in all instances acknowledges formal Commonwealth ownership and authority.

A unique depiction of the Coat of Arms is in the Senate Chamber. This work features free-standing emu and kangaroo sculptures carved in laminated Tasmanian myrtle timber by Peter Taylor. As part of his commission, Taylor engaged glass artist Warren Langley to fabricate the slumped glass star and wreath, glass craftspeople Nathan Munz and Sergio Redegalli to fabricate the thick glass shield, and glass artist Anne Dybka to etch his design into the shield.

The shield, which is traditionally held up by the accompanying support animals, is instead free-standing except for one draped kangaroo paw. The work sits above the President of the Senate’s seat, within a central niche in the large screen wall designed by the architects as an essential element of the Chamber and fabricated in special Tasmanian myrtle veneer by commissioned craftsman Robert Blacklow.

Commission of the Coat of Arms
Integral to the design of Parliament House are site-specific art and craft works commissioned by the Parliament House Construction Authority. All of these works responded to detailed design briefs prepared by the architects, Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp (MGT). More than 85 Australian artists and craftspeople were commissioned for the design of over 70 works of art and craft for specific locations or uses in the building and its precincts. Together they created a series of works that communicates the diverse historic, cultural, and political contexts of the Parliament to Australian identity and democracy.

All commissioned Coats of Arms at Parliament House had to meet the specifications set out in The Armorial Ensigns of the Commonwealth of Australia. The artists followed a guide of which elements were fixed, and which were open to interpretation, written by Australian designer Stuart Devlin. Devlin understood the challenges of re-interpreting the Coat of Arms from his work designing the first Australian decimal coins in 1966.

The design brief outlined a clear desire for the design to find the ‘Australian-ness’ within the Coat of Arms to “avoid treating the Arms as yet another symbol whose meaning has been lost and whose form has become merely an exercise in style.”¹ Taylor certainly did this, pushing the artistic limits of the original symbol to achieve official approval for his ground-breaking design. The Construction Authority sourced advice for Taylor from Melbourne Zoo about the animals’ anatomical accuracy, down to the middle toe of the emu’s right foot and the bend of the kangaroo’s tail.

Taylor was commissioned through special consultancy from the Parliament House Construction Authority in 1984 to work closely with the architects designing the Senate Chamber and to integrate his work with that of Robert Blacklow, the Tasmanian craftsman who was commissioned to detail and fabricate the screen wall, the Central Table, and the Hansard Desk in Tasmanian myrtle. The results offer impressive individual works as well as a high artistic impression as a collective.

Construction of the Coat of Arms
In many ways the highly collaborative design and fabrication process of this work upheld the values of the symbol which it depicts. Of the finished work, combining a variety of artistic technique and materials, Pamille Berg, former MGT partner, said, “the Coat of Arms is for the building, for the people as a whole, but even more important, for the idea which it represents”.²

Senate Chamber Coat of Arms kangaroo under construction on Peter Taylor’s kitchen table, Huonville, Tasmania, c.1985. Image courtesy of the estate of Peter Taylor.

Peter Taylor
Peter Taylor (1927–2019) was an Australian sculptor renowned for his large-scale work in Tasmanian timbers, including Huon pine. His decade of lecturing in sculpture at the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart strongly influenced a generation of young sculptors and furniture designer/makers. Taylor exhibited widely in private and public galleries in the 1970s and 1980s, including in the 1981 Australian Sculpture Triennial and Perspecta and the 1984 Biennale of Sydney. The clients for his numerous public commissions over 28 years included the University of Tasmania, the Supreme Court of Tasmania, and the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney.

Warren Langley
Warren Langley (born 1950) is an Australian contemporary glass artist well known for creating over 50 public art commissions that use light as a principal design element. Such works can be found internationally from the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens in France, the Tacoma Museum of Contemporary Art in the USA and Hong Kong Airport. His accolades include a 1996 Fellowship from the Australian Council for the Arts and being named a 2010 finalist in the International Architecture Symposium in Barcelona.

Anne Dybka OAM
Anne Dybka OAM (1921–2007) was an English-Australian glass engraver. After Dybka immigrated to Australia in 1956 she undertook studies at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. She began exhibiting in the 1970s and was included in the first Australian glass engraving group exhibition in 1987. She had multiple public commissions in Australia including in her home of Sydney’s The Rocks. She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 2003. 

References
1. M. Pamille Berg, Interwoven: the commissioned art and craft for Parliament House, Commonwealth of Australia, 2018, p.18.
2. M. Pamille Berg, Interwoven: the commissioned art and craft for Parliament House, Commonwealth of Australia, 2018, p.170.