Presented in conjunction with the 2020 Perth International Arts Festival, The Art of Trying to Control Flowers is a new exhibition by Scottish-born, New South Wales-based artist Joan Ross. Working across sculpture, video, wallpaper, and installation, Ross uses her characteristic wit to critically re-examine the sins of Australia’s colonial past. Appropriating visual imagery from hi-vis culture, RSL clubs, colonial painting, and white techno-suburbia, The Art of Trying to Control Flowers re-frames Australia’s colonial narrative as a lurid and absurd fantasy, and provokes a questioning of our collective relationship with both history and the environment.
Joan Ross is a nationally-recognised artist who lives and works in New South Wales. In 2020 she was awarded a Masters in Fine Art from the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales. She has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally, and has recently participated in shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the National Gallery of Victoria, Yavuz Gallery, Singapore, and the Samstag Museum, Adelaide. She is represented in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Parliament House art collection, Artbank, and numerous regional galleries and private collections.
Image credit:
Joan Ross
Not a $tone unturned (2020)
Handpainted digital print
Courtesy the Artist and Michael Reid Gallery