Joan Ross transforms Pier Pavilion into an encounter with a critical eye on colonial history
Presented as an offsite extension of Installation Contemporary, Joan Ross presents a video series at Pier Pavilion, Barangaroo. Joan’s animated worlds combine colonial imagery, the absurd and hi vis yellow to reframe the Australian landscape and expose the ongoing consequences of colonisation. By placing them on the harbour’s edge, the videos draws powerful connections between Australia’s colonial history, and contemporary Sydney.
Unveiled on 27 August and on view until 7 September
“I use Hi Vis yellow as metaphor to discuss colonialism: a marker of occupation and control, and a way of showing the legacies of histories that continue to shape how we see”
Joan Ross
About the Artist
Working from a deep love of nature and a disdain for colonial superiority, Joan Ross is an artist whose daringly honest approach to the legacy of colonialism in Australia penetrates the armour and/or camouflage of contemporary society’s fine-washing of Australia’s past, present and future.
With a bold humanist style, Ross’ cross-disciplinary practice and philosophical mission as a Scottish Australian artist, is born from a desire to understand Australia’s protected shady layers of colonial histories. Ross reimagines colonial imagery, imbuing each work with a slew of cultural references that reflect eras unwittingly lived by us all– critiquing the complex and ongoing issues surrounding the effects of greed, globalisation and colonisation all while leaving you with a smile.
Presented by N.Smith Gallery with the support of Destination NSW
About Installations
Installations presents ambitious contemporary art throughout Carriageworks, and for the first time, extends into the city. The program of 14 projects features sculpture, textiles, painting, photography, kinetic forms, and public interventions, with works that are generous and immediate but also ask us to look more closely at the social, ecological, and cultural systems shaping our world.
Artists use spectacle, material invention and public address to explore some of the defining questions of contemporary life: how histories inhabit place, how images circulate, how materials carry memory, and how audiences gather, move, participate and reflect. Installations is curated by José Da Silva, Director of UNSW Galleries.
