Beautiful Tensions

Anne Brennan received her jewellery training at Jakob Kramer College in Leeds in the United Kingdom. She and Catherine Truman shared a small workshop in Mitcham for a time, before co-founding Gray Street Workshop with Sue Lorraine in 1985. While working at Gray Street she also began to write about the visual arts, craft and design, an interest that eventually led to the offer of a temporary teaching position in the Art Theory Workshop at Canberra School of Art (now Australian National University School of Art and Design) and she left Gray Street in 1990.

Anne completed a Master of Visual Arts at ANU in 1994. She was offered a permanent position at ANU School of Art in 1995, where she continued to teach and work in several senior roles for 23 years. During this time Anne also kept up her practice as an artist, most notably in two collaborative projects with Anne Ferran, Secure the Shadow at Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks in 1995, and Twice Removed at Maitland Regional Gallery in 2004. Her work is included in several major collections, including the National Gallery of Australia.

Since her retirement from ANU, she has continued to write on the visual arts, craft and design. Most recently she co-edited the textiles issue of Art Monthly Australasia (Winter issue 2024) with Julie Ewington and Blake Griffiths and contributed the catalogue essay for the 2024 retrospective exhibition of senior tapestry weaver Diana Wood Conroy at Wollongong Art Gallery.

Anne lives and works in Canberra on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people.