It is wet and muggy the day we visit Carriageworks, fitting conditions to view I remember you—an expansive solo exhibition by Salote Tawale that takes its cues from the artist’s Pacific Island heritage. Amidst the subtropical Sydney steam, we reflect on our own memories of returning to our respective ancestral archipelagic homelands (The Cook Islands and Sāmoa for Talia; The Philippines for June). The qualities of the humid heat are hard to describe (sticky, damp, oppressive) because it is so much more about how it feels, and sometimes feeling surpasses language. Similarly, memory can also be difficult to articulate. One can never be too sure of what is real or imagined since there is a certain slipperiness or fragmentation to how memories are invoked in the present. It is for these reasons that our memories distend the spatial and temporal orientations that distinguish then from now, there from here. Along this continuum, how might identity be formed through memory, both personal and collective? If memory is a vessel that holds the capacity to transport us elsewhere to another time and place, then how do we moor ourselves? How do we avoid getting lost in the sea of nostalgia that memory tempts us with?
June Miskell is a writer and researcher living on unceded Gadigal and Wangal land. She teaches at UNSW Art & Design, Sydney where she is currently undertaking her PhD. Talia Smith is an artist, writer, and curator based in Sydney on Gadigal and Darug land. She currently works as the Curator of Blacktown Arts.
