Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website I Don’t See Colour by Fijian Australian artist, Salote Tawale opens at PICA 30 July
luglio 16, 2021 - Pica Di Valentina Giulia Schwab

I Don’t See Colour by Fijian Australian artist, Salote Tawale opens at PICA 30 July

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

I don’t see colour presents a new body of work by #salotetawale, the inaugural recipient of the Michela and Adrian Fini Artist Fellowship, awarded by the Sheila Foundation. Tawale has risen to prominence with her unique examination of issues relating to identity, representation
and power from the perspective of her iTauke Fijian and Anglo-Australian heritage. With a diverse practice that includes video, performance, painting, photography, installation and sculpture, Tawale addresses the complex legacies and relationships between colonialism, capital, race and gender with pointed and often humorously shaped critique.

Tawale’s exhibition for #pica takes as its starting point a conversation she had with a student at a party in the UK, where she had travelled to research Fijian objects and imagery held within colonial archives. I don’t see colour explores the implications of (colour) blindness to race and history in the face of accelerating climate change and growing future uncertainty.

The walls of the gallery will be painted in shades of green and blue using repeated, measured lines, mimicking the appearance of woven mats made from the leaves of Pandanus palm.

Central to the exhibition is a small dwelling-like structure. Made from familiar, mostly salvaged materials – tarpaulin, corrugated iron, bamboo, cement blocks – the temporary structure evokes the colours and textures of Fiji’s built environment, and specifically the portable buildings constructed on special occasions in the artist’s family village. A space where #people gather, prepare and share food, and host visitors and
events, these buildings are in themselves important archives of cultural and familial knowledge, storehouses of unwritten memories, stories and histories. 

Housed within this makeshift structure is a new video work by the artist. Titled We don’t see colour, it centres on the Pacific Ocean, a space of healing and connection for Tawale to the Pacific Islands of her ancestry. At times Tawale swims away from the camera into the abyss, leaving us in her wake. Catching up, we find Tawale’s body floating suspended in water, swayed by the gentle ebb and flow of the current. A
spoken word narration voiced by Tawale resounds through the exhibition, speaking not only to what has been but what continues to unfold, and the legacies, histories and identities that circulate the deep ocean waters.

To reach the video, audiences will weave their way around five paintings suspended from the ceiling by ropes and anchored to the floor with cement, brick and rock. The scale and texture of the paintings approximate traditional Fijian bark cloth or masi, a clothlike material made from the bark of the mulberry tree, often painted in geometric patterns and still used in important ceremonies and presented as gifts of exchange. Collectively titled I don’t see colour, these paintings depict portraits without identifiable subjects, their vacant, sunken expressions meeting the viewer head-on. Composed of a mix of different coloured skin tones, they have been created by Tawale in direct response the exhibition’s title.

I don’t see colour confronts us with our own identity, position and relationships to the place we are, and to our possible, shared futures. In the face of climate change, with the small island nations of the Pacific region among those most vulnerable, the artist imagines climate change as an indiscriminate force that doesn’t see colour either.

“Salote Tawale is one of Australia’s most significant artists to have emerged in Australia in recent times. Her work is sharply intelligent and gently human, it strikes at the heart of our relationships to family, identity, and the effects of climate change on the environment.” Says #pica Director #amybarrettlennard.

“We are thrilled to be working with Salote and to have received support from Adrian and Michela Fini and the Sheila Foundation for this important new exhibition.” I don’t see colour will open at our Winter Exhibition Celebration from 6.30pm on Thursday 29 July, alongside Love in Bright Landscapes, curated by Annika Kristensen; and Leitī by Sione Monū. The opening celebrations will feature a Welcome to Country by Noongar elder Vaughn McGuire, and a special cultural exchange ceremony between Noongar and Fijian Elders.