Joan Ross’ M’lady Ikebana (2015) encapsulates many of the central concerns within her practice, including colonialism, displacement, and the framing of Australia through European systems of taste and representation. At the centre of the work, a colonial woman arranges native Australian flora in the style of ikebana, transforming Country into an ornamental display shaped by imported cultural traditions.

Joan exaggerates the figure’s attire into something deliberately absurd, with an oversized feathered headdress and her signature fluro yellow-green gown disrupting the romanticism often associated with colonial imagery. The fluorescent colour operates as both visual interruption and warning, unsettling the viewer’s reading of the scene.

Hidden within the composition are small First Nations figures, quietly referencing histories of displacement and erasure under colonial occupation. Their presence contrasts with the framed colonial landscape painting in the background, which presents the land as something to be viewed, controlled, and possessed.

The patterned carpet beneath the scene evokes the way Aboriginal art and visual language have often been reduced to decoration within domestic and institutional spaces, detached from cultural meaning and sovereignty.

Through satire and theatricality, Joan exposes the ongoing legacies of colonial power embedded within Australian visual culture.