I’m sick of being polite
Joshua Searle encounters, discusses and unpacks the colonial state binaries of ‘White/Black’, in a series of 12 text based paintings that draw on his artistic predecessors and influences whilst examining his own Australian-Colombian heritage and identity.
Painted almost entirely in monochrome, their black and white palette examines Western society’s constructs of ‘Blackness’ and ‘Whiteness’.
This exhibition title draws inspiration from Australian artist Gordon Bennett’s artwork ‘Notes to Basquiat: Be Polite’, made in 1998, the year of Searle’s birth.
Searle continues an important centralisation of resistance and discussion within “Australian” art, and the art of settler-colonies internationally, as a reclamation, assertion and expression of voices and imagery that is entirely central and crucial to our society.
MONPHELL HOUSE
7-9 Brunswick Rd,Brunswick East
MAY26-28 2023
