The Meeting, 2015

single thread hand-sewn embroidery

41 x 42 cm

Boroondara City Council Collection

In the embroidery The Meeting, a one-pound note is layered on top of a page from Jong’s diary. The one-pound note was produced in the late 1800s by the Commercial Bank of Australia, where Lowe sat on the board. It is the first bi-lingual one pound note in Australia, with both Chinese and English script. This embroidery brings into dialogue the vast disparity in the lives of these two men: in the year 1866, Lowe had reached at the peak of social acceptance as a Victorian elite, while that same year Jong was incarcerated. Young commissioned these images to be hand-sewn in order to illustrate the exceptional care and attention that should be given to this poignant conjunction of events.