A Moth-Eaten Christian Art Award

The Mandorla Art Award bills itself as “Australia’s most significant thematic Christian art prize” with a focus on “contemporary religious art”.[1] Saint John of God Health Care, Australia’s largest chain of Catholic hospitals, sponsors the winning prize.

This year’s winner, Claire Beausein, a resident of Western Australia, captured the $25,000 prize with a work of art titled Chalice made from “wild silkworm cocoons, stitched together with silk thread, museum insect pins on cotton rag paper”.[2] The theme this year was “metamorphosis”, with a nod to Isaiah 43:19: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”[3]

According to the award’s curator, Lyn Di Ciero, as mentioned in an article appearing in the Record (“The official magazine for the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth”), Western art’s emergence coincides primarily with religious art and an illiterate populace where the art itself was to convey biblical stories.[4] In other words, art is a tool of communication. However, Di Ciero’s idea of Western art postulates something straightforward, a shared vocabulary in religious artistic symbolism. To break ties from that common symbolic language or an attempt to force meaning onto a symbol that cannot possibly hold it is to obfuscate meaning.

Yet a breaking from a common religious, symbolic vocabulary is what Chalice does. Beausein did produce a work of art. Stitching together hundreds of silkworm cocoons sounds labour intensive. It is certainly an interesting piece worthy of reflection. However, it seems to miss the mark regarding a common Christian, symbolic artistic language.

The silkworm cocoons could symbolise a change as the creature undergoes what science would consider a metamorphosis, a complete transformation in shape and form, signalling a new stage of life. The worm changes from its larva stage to its pupa (cocoon) stage and then to its adult stage.

A quick internet search would have helped the artist and judges. The adult stage of a silkworm is a moth. Had the judges and artists continued reading Isaiah through chapter 51 or spent a little time with Job 13 or Hosea 5, they would discover that moths symbolise wickedness and destruction. In Scripture, the moth is set in contrast against a good God who creates. An additional quick jaunt through a Bible commentary or two would also have served the judges and artist well, as much of the commentary on Isaiah 43:19 frames the passage as one that refers to the Exodus and the performing of “new” miracles. Therefore, when the symbolism of the moth, the silkworm’s adult stage of life after it emerges from its cocoon, is juxtaposed against the works of God, the result seems more contradictory than complimentary, as God’s works do not end in wickedness.

The judges, and arguably the artist, also seem to miss the plain fact that symbols have meaning, and in Christianity those symbols have rich and long heritages. To change the meaning of those symbols does not add clarity but only adds confusion.

Another matter is whether the winning piece of art is beautiful in the classical sense. In other words, does Chalice fit the three classical traits of beauty: integrity, harmony and clarity?

Is it whole and complete (integrity)? The cloth rag backing the artist used to stitch the cocoons on is only 80 per cent covered by the worm cocoons. The artist’s own statement accompanying the work gives no hint as to whether keeping the bottom right portion empty was deliberate. Did the artist run out of wild silkworm cocoons? Is the artist attempting to pass off incomplete work as complete, thereby pulling a fast one on the judges?

Additionally, from a distance Chalice looks like a large piece of yellowed papyrus. However, the choice to leave it 80 per cent complete makes Chalice look like aged papyrus that has succumbed to a kind of vermin attack originating at the bottom right-hand corner.

Is it harmonious? Does it fit and work together? Harmony appears to be presupposed by first a kind of completeness, so initially, no—Chalice is not harmonious as it appears to be incomplete. Are all the pieces working together? Is it at least proportional in its incompleteness? It is hard to say, but it looks as if the answer should at least be “no” on the principle that to know if something works together in harmony one must first know what a thing is and how it functions.

Does it reveal what it is trying to communicate (clarity)? The title initially conceals what it is trying to reveal, as the art itself appears to have no connection to a drinking vessel. In an interview, the artist reveals the reasoning behind the title, where she analogously connects the cocoon to the chalice used at the Mass[5]—a meaning that cannot be deduced by looking at the work alone. The title attempts to juxtapose the transformation of the silkworm and emergence from its cocoon to transubstantiation, a word the artist does not seem to know—as she does not make the necessary distinction between transformation, which is what the silkworm undergoes, and transubstantiation, which is what happens to the wine and bread during Mass.

Did the judges award the prize knowing with full knowledge the symbolism of the moth? Could this be an example of ignorance or incompetence? Is this an instance of an accidental artistic Ern Malley where the artist not only fools the judges, but also herself? Would Marcel Duchamp chuckle slyly under his breath at this partial-made? Is Chalice more in line with Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree—a philosophical and sophistical mish-mash that is really a glass of water on a shelf? Or is it just a merger of nihilistic, navel-gazing, baby boomer, religious, art ideology that seems more bent on novelty and kitsch than on intelligibility and beauty?

Examining some of the past winners, it appears the Mandola Art Award is more often the former. For example, in 1990, John Paul won the Mandola Art Award for a painting inspired by the scriptural theme found in Luke 1:26–38, the Annunciation title Ante Lucem (Before the Light).[6] The blessed Mother looks more like a middle-aged woman with a uninterested expression who dares not looks at the angelic figure while trying to escape from the angelic figure’s embrace, than like the youthful lady saying fiat to Gabriel’s message. The judges seem to miss that the apparent angelic figure speaking to Mary, if it is indeed Gabriel, was portrayed by Paul in an unusual way: as the academic Kellie Costello has observed, the representation of Gabriel is done in such a way that his posture looks intrusive and forceful.[7] The position of the angel’s hand on top of Mary’s and the positioning of his right foot and leg seem to suggest that the angel is preventing Mary from fleeing. Additionally, with the closeness of both bodies and faces, along with Mary looking away from Gabriel, and combined with their postures, the piece seems to suggest a forceful restraint of Mary by Gabriel at minimum and at maximum the early stages of a forced sexual encounter, both of which are contrary to the biblical narrative, source text and common portrayals of the Annunciation. Costello writes that Gabriel is characterised as a tattooed and “winged Maori warrior patupaiarehe”.[8] Patupaiarehe are supernatural beings known for abducting attractive women, luring them away from their camps with music, and making love to them before releasing them back to their tribe.[9]

John Paul won the Mandola Award a second time in 2012 with a sexually suggestive portrayal of Jesus on Palm Sunday riding into Jerusalem wearing only a loin cloth and a crown of thorns while being embraced by a woman from behind who is resting her head on his shoulder; she is suggestively nude, based on her exposed shoulder.[10] Jesus himself has his hand on another woman’s waist, and with the implied motion in the art, her cocked head, and her left hand caressing the ear of the donkey, it looks as if the two are moments from a more than intimate kiss, which makes Jesus appear to be collecting women for a harem.

In 2016 the award was given to a work titled The Bread Basket at Emmaus, a basket made from “a whole bible, every printed page carefully rolled up and sewn into a basket in a long process of assemblage”.[11] The artist rendered the Word of God not only unrecognisable, but also unreadable. The 2018 award winner looks as if someone raided their grandmother’s cupboards and cleverly arranged glasses and medicine containers with crocheted tea doilies as steeples on a mirror so that it vaguely resembles a cathedral.[12]

If the Mandola Art Award reveals anything, is that modern contemporary religious art has succumbed to the same fate as most modern jazz: irrelevant and indecipherable to the common person. In other words, religious art, as Lyn Di Ciero indicates, once clearly communicated something to an illiterate and uneducated populace, but now “Australia’s most significant thematic Christian art prize” seems to coincide with a descent in Western religious art that keeps meaning hidden from a largely literate populace.

If Chalice was hanging in a museum of modern art, how would a casual onlooker know, from the art alone, that it is religious art? Would the onlooker even be able to suggest Chalice had any kind of religious theme? In other words, would Chalice and many of the other Mandorla Art Award winners, as well as many of the highly commended works, pass the pub test? Unlikely.

Perhaps a new direction in religious art is needed—in which the Christian religious artist is first informed by Christian theology.

Paul Catalanotto is undertaking research at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle.

[1] “About – The Mandorla Art Award,” accessed October 25, 2022, https://mandorlaart.com/about/.

[2] “3. Claire Beausein (WA) – The Mandorla Art Award,” accessed October 18, 2022, https://mandorlaart.com/product/3-claire-beausein-wa/.

[3] “2022 Mandorla Art Award – The Mandorla Art Award,” accessed October 18, 2022, https://mandorlaart.com/2022-mandorla-art-award/.

[4] “WA Artist Takes Home Major Prize,” The Record, October 2022.

[5] “Interview with 2022 Mandorla Major Winner – The Mandorla Art Award,” accessed October 18, 2022, https://mandorlaart.com/interview-with-2022-mandorla-major-winner/.

[6] “Past Winners – The Mandorla Art Award,” accessed October 18, 2022, https://mandorlaart.com/past-winners/.

[7] Kellie Costello, “An Exegetical Study of The Annunciation of Luke 1:26-38 Through Art and Text The” (Master of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Australia, n.d.), 91.

[8] Costello, 96.

[9] Martin Wikaira, “Encounters with Patupaiarehe,” Web page (Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga), accessed October 18, 2022, https://teara.govt.nz/en/patupaiarehe/page-2.

[10] “Past Winners – The Mandorla Art Award.”

[11] “Past Winners – The Mandorla Art Award.”

[12] “Past Winners – The Mandorla Art Award.”