‘The Take Over’ is a stunning new tapestry that marks an exciting shift in palette, texture and medium for the artist Clare Woods. It forms part of a series of three tapestries created in collaboration with the world-renowned Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, which will be shown for the first time in London this Autumn.
Together, the tapestries have taken six Dovecot weavers over a year to create, translating small watercolours that were themselves created in hours. They are inspired by the artist’s desire to create art with skill and with feeling and in response to opportunities afforded by the art world to make work on a large scale. While much of her practice involves the slick sheen of oil paint on aluminium, working with tapestry coincides with Woods’ recent exploration of watercolour. By enlarging these works on paper, the weavers have captured the way the watercolour pigment pools, bleeds and sinks into the paper’s grain.
Woods began her collaboration with Dovecot in May 2025 following a conversation at the Royal Academy of Arts. In discussion, it became clear her approach to painting shares an affinity with tapestry as she often begins with a drawn outline, similar to a tapestry cartoon, mapping the composition before building up the image in paint. Encouraged by Dovecot, Woods created the watercolours specifically with their translation into tapestry in mind. The size, layered washes, subtle tonal shifts and fluid depth of the watercolours gives rich scope for interpretation through Dovecot’s expert skill in blending yarn.
The tapestry will be unveiled in a new exhibition this Autumn alongside two other collaborations ‘The Smotherers’, 2026, and ‘The Volunteers’, 2026.
