ABSTRACT
Faletau’s executive-style briefcase is slowly falling apart. The black fake leather surface is scuffed and peeling; the chrome plating on the handle has chipped off and the corroded metal underneath leaves rust stains on your hands when you hold it. When he opens it, it is often with an air of solemnity, a sense of performative gesture; it is a ritual. The heavily stained interior gives off the musty, rotting smell that paper quickly acquires in the intense heat and humidity. It is where ‘everything is kept’:
• Several creased, well-handled photographs: a fading, barely decipherable image of a young girl standing by some large plants looking straight at the camera, the colour bleached out to a series of pastel tones; a blurred black and white photograph of a woman standing by a bicycle; a colour Polaroid photograph, with a name and date written on the back, showing a man in a bright red shirt standing by a child.
Scraps of paper with hand-written commentaries on particular Bible verses.
Partial genealogies in elaborate geometrical forms drawn on oddly shaped pieces of cardboard.
An assortment of pencils and biros (some not working).
A cutting – yellowing, torn, and stuck together with tape – from a Solomon Islands newspaper article about Faletau’s woodcarvings.
A postcard of the Sydney Opera House given to him by an Australian tourist he met in Munda.
Drawings that combine Christian symbolism with stylised depictions of local animals – hearts, crosses and doves, with crocodiles and sharks.
A pair of very scratched black plastic sunglasses.
