The Twelve Napkins

Shortlisted for the 2024 Mandorla Art Award & Awarded the Highly Commended Perth Catholic Archdiocese Prize

Now part of the Art Gallery of NSW National Art Archive

The Theme for the 2024 Mandorla Art Award ​was:​ Refocus
Reference text: “Let all that you do be done in love.” – 1 Corinthians 16:14​ (NRSV)

Statement
My mother Jacqueline was a committed Catholic living in Mauritius. In 1990, she gifted me twelve napkins that she had embroidered with flowers for me.

Our relationship was subsequently rocked when I came out as a gay man. It took painful years to find a space, like the mandorla, where our worlds could overlap. Until she died, we manoeuvred tension and topics that remained unspoken as well as renewed joy and laughter.

As a meditation on my mother’s legacy, I embroidered excerpts from her favourite handwritten recipes, on the twelve napkins, with the same brand of DMC embroidery thread that she had used. The napkins are folded like a bishop’s mitre to reference my mother's former dinner party table settings and the Church.

In the quietude of embroidering, my mother and I host a feast.

Comment from the judges
This is a quiet work that invites the viewer into an intimate and vulnerable space in which family​ and faith are intertwined and handed down across generations. The napkin is a familiar object​ that evokes the home, family gatherings and keepsakes. Folded into the shape of a bishop’s​ mitre, each napkin holds the hand of both the artist and his mother, forever connected by love.

Dimensions
Approx L 80 cm X W 35 cm X H 15 cm

Materials
Linen and cotton

Photography
Felicity Jenkins

With thanks to
- Lisa Giles who said to me, 'Why don't you make your own mark on the napkins?', Avril Makula and Mandy Burgess
- Also Louise Haigh and Anna Senior
- The last four photos below are from the 2024 Mandorla Art Award and Lovely One Photography