holemtaet hemia (hold this/ hold this tightly) is a new solo exhibition from Shari O’Dwyer at The Condensery that explores the woven memories between generations of South Sea Islanders in the Australian colony.
The exhibition sees O’Dwyer exploring new forms. “I decided to expand my practice beyond painting to hold the narratives that I’m working with in this exhibition.” O’Dwyer presents video works, dance, stories from family members, textiles, and found object sculptures made from fruit boxes and storebought shells.
While the exhibition began as a meditation on her family’s history as South Sea Islanders who experienced forced labour in the Australian colony, her works present narratives of intergenerational love and joy, and of how her family grew despite hardship. “I had known about trauma and disadvantage in my family history, but when I saw The Plantation by Sancintya Mohini Simpson at The Carpark Gallery, I realised her works were mapping a colonial narrative that my family experienced too, and that’s when it began to click for me,” O’Dwyer says, “Our family didn’t want to be here.”
O’Dwyer spoke about Bath Water (2025), a video work about the two-bedroom shed where her mother and seven siblings grew up. “The shed was on the banks of the Pioneer River. It was beautiful to witness and record, my uncle and family sharing memories of walking to the river, collecting water in a bucket, and walking back to the shed where they lived to prepare the bath.” O’Dwyer superimposed herself dancing over the video, as a reference to when her mother spontaneously started dancing in her backyard after returning home from hospital. “I didn’t think we had any connection to these traditions, but maybe we’re naturally drawn to these movements. My mother said her uncle taught her but couldn’t remember his name.”
In O’Dwyer’s work ancestral grief is often non-linear, pain and joy and humour punctuating and threading memories and feelings together. The Ritual (2024-25) depicts O’Dwyer having her hair brushed by her mother while she herself brushes her daughter’s hair, presenting hair brushing as an act of intergenerational love and care. In the same work, her mother shares the childhood memory of getting in trouble for stealing sugarcane, sucking on the stalk, and spitting out the pith. In Our Song and Dance (2024-25) O’Dwyer’s family perform the Macarena floating through frames layered with floating hibiscus, rotating bananas, shells, and her brother and nephew’s cars. “There is something I’m drawn to about dancing in unison. It feels like in that moment, we become one body.”
holemtaet hemia (hold this/ hold this tightly) is deeply personal. “I remember looking at my kids and thinking, you have no idea about what you’re part of, and for me artmaking has become a way to connect with family. It’s been a beautiful process of acceptance and love.” O’Dwyer says her mother did not share a lot of family history because of shame, and that her aim with this exhibition has been to show her mother and her family that these stories of survival should be celebrated.
The Condensery was the first condensed milk factory in the Australian colonies and became the repository where procurement records were kept. O’Dwyer tells me one of the owners was Colin Munro, an advocate for blackbirding (the process of abducting people for forced labour). In response to the site, O’Dwyer created a sculpture with artificial shells arranged on a doormat in reference to her South Sea Islander heritages, and how it now has to be bought back—that they’re not on their land anymore.
“There’s obviously an element of resentment and guilt,” O’Dwyer says, “I don’t have these same experiences that my family has had.” This exhibition, she says, is part of her work in maintaining relationships to her family now. The journey for O’Dwyer began seven years ago, “I remember when I had my kids, I started really feeling like I needed my family around me, and I looked at my kids and thought, you have no idea the people that have held these lives for you.” holemtaet hemia (hold this/ hold this tightly), is O’Dwyer’s response to this desire to build intimacy, creating a series of works that show the interrelational nature of memory, identity, and resistance.
holemtaet hemia (hold this/ hold this tightly)
Shari O’Dwyer
The Condensery, QLD
20 September 2025—30 November 2025
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