Joan Ross is a Scottish Australian artist whose bold, cross-disciplinary practice investigates the enduring legacies of colonialism in Australia with fluoro intensity, sharp humour, and critical insight. Guided by a deep love of nature and a refusal to gloss over Australia’s colonial past, Ross reimagines historical imagery to expose the ongoing impacts of greed, globalisation, and cultural displacement that continue to shape contemporary life.
Working across animation, video, sculpture, printmaking, and virtual reality, Ross draws on visual languages of earlier eras to create works that feel both historically grounded and unmistakably contemporary. Her practice is anchored by a long-standing interest in collecting — how cultural objects are gathered, displayed, and interpreted, and how those acts shape the narratives nations build around themselves.
Ross has exhibited widely across Australia. Her recent major survey at the National Portrait Gallery was titled Those trees came back to me in my dreams (2024–2025), in which she paired historical portraits from the Gallery’s collection with her own artworks to reframe and question established narratives. Her acclaimed VR work Did you ask the river? premiered at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in March 2019 — the result of a major VR commission under the Mordant Family program. In 2020, as part of the expansion project for the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney Modern Project), Ross was commissioned to produce a large-scale public work We have sung the same song for millions of years — a hoarding installation that reflects her ongoing engagement with institutional space and public art.
Ross’s contributions to Australian art have been recognised with major accolades. She is a winner of the Sir John Sulman Prize (2017), and has been a finalist multiple times in the Archibald Prize for her portrait works.
Beyond her artistic practice, Ross is an active and genrous contributor to Australia’s creative community — eyond her artistic practice, Ross plays a vital role in Australia’s creative community, shaping artists and ideas as an educator, mentor, and judge, while being recognised as a valued and influential peer. Her works continue to challenge, illuminate, and delight, encouraging audiences to engage thoughtfully with the complexities of Australia’s past and future.