Exploring his Colombian heritage and diasporic identity as well as broader socio-cultural issues in Australia today, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery presents Joshua Searle: Bienvenido – the first solo exhibition by Joshua Searle to be held in a major public gallery.
Searle is an emerging artist with an increasing national and commercial profile. His work examines socio-cultural issues and his own diasporic identity. Searle has been a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize (AGNSW) (2025, 2023), Fremantle Print Art Award (2025) and a finalist in MPRG’s National Works on Paper (2024).
In 2024, Searle was awarded a Mason Family Trust Fellowship which supported a research trip to his mother’s homeland in Colombia. He explored Indigenous goldsmithing and sculptural practices through museum collections and meeting with archaeologists whilst visiting archaeological sites. There he studied Pre-Columbian artefacts as a means to further understand his own connection to history and identity as an Australian-Colombian.
The exhibition title Bienvenido means ‘welcome’ in Spanish – a greeting that, in this context, evokes a personal arrival, belonging, and return. It captures a significant moment in Searle’s life: his first visit to Colombia, where he met extended family and walked the streets of his ancestral town. Being welcomed into a home bigger than home.
During the Fellowship, Searle met with Eugenio Viola, Artistic Director of the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art who worked in Australia a few years back, connected with contemporary art gallerists, and attended ARTBO, South America’s leading contemporary art fair, as well as visiting many museums of contemporary art, and sites of historical and archaeological significance, tracing the history of Columbia over millennia.
Searle worked with Teo Duque, a ceramicist at the Archaeological Museum in Bogotá, who specialised in traditional sculptural practices, creating reproduction objects for museums. Sharing his connection to and knowledge of these practices with Searle, Duque inspired the next stage of Searle’s work.
Back in Australia, Searle collaborated with Melbourne-based artist Brendan Huntley and Stoker Studio in Mornington to produce a new large-scale work El Sudor del Sol (The Sweat of the Sun), a major wall installation inspired by Colombian expressions and techniques he learned from Duque.
The title references the indigenous belief in South America that gold was the sweat of sun, also viewed as a god, symbolising balance and divine connection rather than material value. While this history underpins the work, Searle’s focus lies in exploring language and cultural identity, with gold’s symbolism serving as a resonant backdrop.
Bienvenido includes five large carved wooden sculptures that reinterpret the cultural strength of sacred objects traditionally used for spiritual protection. Positioned in front of five large-scale murals, they create a powerful setting where sculpture and painting combine to evoke reflection, protection, and a connection to something beyond the everyday.
In the painting and sculptural work Querer es poder (love is power) Searle reflects on his great uncle’s experience with civil unrest and dealing with family trauma. This powerful sentiment rejects violence and reframes compassion as strength. Through these gestures, Searle explores cultural duality not as conflict but connection, offering a vision of healing rooted in empathy, resilience, and renewed understanding.
Joshua Searle: Bienvenido
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery – Civic Reserve, Dunns Road, Mornington
Exhibition: 6 September – 16 November 2025
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au for details.
Images: Joshua Searle, Lost in Colour, exhibition view, &Gallery, Australia | Joshua Searle (supplied)