Carriageworks has unveiled the first major solo exhibition by Sydney-based Australian-Fijian artist Salote Tawale, titled I remember you, now open until Sunday, 28 January 2024. Across two spaces at Carriageworks, the exhibition considers how identity is formed through memory.

In Bay 21, the Carriageworks Clothing Store resident artist responds to the expansive scale of Carriageworks’ architecture. Conceived as a ‘memory bank’, the ambitious presentation of new work immerses visitors in a whole environment that brings together paintings, sculptures, and karaoke. Inside the gallery we encounter cardboard hanging masks; plywood cut-outs of people and plants placed like theatrical set pieces; and a hibiscus floral pattern loosely painted across the gallery wall. A partial replica of the artist’s Fijian family home known as a vale – built on cinder blocks and clad with corrugated iron – stands complete with a clothesline out the back. At the rear of the gallery, pop songs play from a makeshift karaoke booth, inviting visitors to pick up a mic and sing along. With panels missing from the house, flowers fading out, and song lyrics misremembered, the installation is partially formed, materializing the fallibility of memory.

Alongside the installation in Bay 21, Tawale’s almost 14-meter-long bamboo raft, titled No Location (2021), is moored in the Public Space. Originally presented as part of the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the work is based on a childhood memory. On a visit to the Fiji Museum in Suva at 10 years old, Tawale recalls seeing a scale model of the traditional Fijian watercraft known as a bilibili. At the time, Tawale imagined the vessel as a way to move between her home in Australia and her family in Fiji. No Location reinterprets the established method of making a raft. Using the labor-intensive process of bundling and binding bamboo for the structure, Tawale distinctly incorporates tarps and ropes – everyday materials typical of her work – alongside personal items chosen for the artist’s journey. In title and form, No Location embodies Tawale’s experience of displacement.