Joan Ross

Joan Ross has, with the assistance of animator Ben Butler and sound artist Sumugan Sivanesan, created a contemporary installation inspired by convict artist Joseph Lycett’s trademark picturesque tableaux. In many of Lycett’s paintings and etchings, self-conscious settlers pervade the middle ground, more often than not announcing their ownership of a piece of land, waterway or mountain.

In this contemporary installation Ross has extracted and combined the figures, flora, fauna and landscape elements found in Lycett’s work to comment on our paranoid surveillance and demarcation of public space. With humour and charm, Ross reminds us that curiosity is first and foremost a visual impulse, one that is tied to the desire for possession and control.