Image: The Dax Centre, Sydney
'Tasting the Divine' will be on view at Studio Dax Gallery from 30 September to 18 December 2026, with its official opening evening scheduled for 22 October.
The exhibition includes a series of works by Australian-Colombian artist Joshua Searle depicting toucans eating ripe papaya, rendered in lush, saturated colour. It also includes a hammock and two carved wooden chairs.
The toucan-and-papaya series emerged from Searle’s 2024 Mason Family Trust Fellowship in Colombia, where he retraced his maternal lineage for the first time and undertook a trek to the Lost City in Santa Marta.
In the paintings, the toucan becomes a bearer of abundance, its curved beak meeting the open fruit in a gesture of sustenance rather than conquest. Through repetition and intimacy of focus, 'Tasting the Divine' invites viewers to slow down and consider the sacred in everyday gestures.
The works suggest that belonging is not found through possession, but through relationship with culture, community and oneself. More broadly, Searle’s practice explores memory, inheritance and cultural reclamation through painting and sculpture, examining how histories of migration, displacement and colonisation shape identity and belonging. Drawing on his Colombian heritage, he revisits Pre-Columbian artefacts and museum collections, transforming them into contemporary meditations on power, loss and the endurance of culture.
