Courtesy: the artist and Murray Museum Art Museum Albury, Victoria.

Love from here is a new solo exhibition by Salote Tawale. This video installation acts as a self-portrait and relates to her ongoing exploration into cultural identity in particular, the diaspora experience and the realities of being from a mixed heritage. Each element of the work explores the coalescence of her Fijian heritage with everyday life living in contemporary Australia. The video is in the style of a Youtube cooking show and depicts Tawale in a campfire setting cooking a traditional Fijian dish which uses colonial ingredients such as corned beef. Rather than being filmed in her village in Fiji, the video is shot on Australian bushland. Adding to this idea of removal or relocation, the video is positioned within cut-out paintings of potted indoor plants from her home. The use of indoor plants references the idea of bringing the outdoors inside, as well as the colonial practice of importing native species from colonised countries and growing them in unfamiliar environments where they then begin to settle.

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