Beneath each figure in these four works is a hand towel. This is not a neutral background. It represents bland domesticity — the ordinary rituals of setting up a home: wedding gifts, a first house, the accumulation of everyday objects that come with building a life alongside another person. For many gay men, including myself, this was denied. What looks like an inconsequential, even trite, choice of pattern is instead a marker of loss — the specific ache of never having access to that kind of domestic life.
— Behan
