This work uses hosts as a starting point for exploring themes connected to blood memory, remembrance and consumption. It is composed of over 1000 copper stems, each piercing a communion wafer traditionally consumed in Christian ritual, stitched through with red silk thread to miniature portraits of the artist, her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and graphite rubbings from sepulchre texts.
Drawing on Catholic doctrine, the work uses the metaphor of consumption to state publicly that, in the quest for a 'good death' we must share in rituals of remembrance.
copper, communion wafers, silk, paper
80 x 45 x 20 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 2012 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Guido Belgiorno-Nettis AM (Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW and Director of the Transfield Foundation), Natalie Wilson (Assistant Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW) and Professor Janice Reid AM (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney and Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW).
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