2011 Private Commission

Nona was a private commission for writer Rebecca Huntley who in August 2011 finished writing The Italian Girl, a family memoir published by University of Queensland Press in May 2012. The memoir follows Huntley’s decade long search for the story of her Italian grandmother – her Nona.  - During the Second World War her Grandmother’s husband was interned in the South Australian desert for being an enemy alien.  During this time this remarkable young woman was left to run the family sugar cane farm. At night she would make lace and stitch embroideries.

The commission is a memoir to Nona. It has been created with fragments of her embroideries, slips and silk camisoles. The piece also includes birth certificates, immigration papers and small faded sepia-toned photos of the women in Nona’s family on the cane farm in North Queensland. 

Title: Nona
Dimensions: 500 mm wide x 500 mm height
Materials: Silk, cottons, photo transfer, machine stitched onto a soluble substrate.