Start at Home No. 100 - Joan Ross

Joan Ross was born in Glasgow in 1961 and now lives in Sydney. She creates art using drawing, painting, sculpture and video. Her work often uses bright fluorescent yellow colour together with traditional romanticised landscapes and humour to explore Australia’s colonial past. Ross changes old historical pictures to show how colonisation affected First Nations people, their land, and nature. Her wirt helps viewers think about history, fairness, and how the past still affects Australia today.

In I Give You a Mountain (2018), artist Joan Ross made an animation using bright colours and funny digital effects to tell an important story. The video begins inside the old Leverian Museum in London. It is based on old drawings by Sarah Stone, who painted animals and objects taken during James Cook’s voyages. Ross changes the images, so collectors are trapped in jars. Later, one man tries to “give” another a mountain, showing how colonisers thought land could be owned. The video’s ending reminds us to think about history, power, and fairness.

Questions:

• Joan Ross uses funny ideas to tell serious stories about Australia’s past. Why is it funny to give someone something like a mountain?

• Ross uses super bright fluorescent yellow in her art—it looks like glowing highlighter!
• Ross sometimes puts modern objects into old paintings to make them look silly and surprising. Like a surveillance camera or spray can.

1. Draw or paint a simple landscape with mountains, trees, and sky.
2. Draw two people facing each other, with their arms reaching out. Have some distance between them.
3. Cut out a funny or strange objects from a magazine (like the moon, an elephant, or an ocean wave). You can combine magazine cut-outs with things you draw yourself.
4. Glue what you cut out or draw onto a lollipop stick or straw.
5. Ask an adult to help you cut a small slit (line) in the paper between the two people.
6. Slide the stick through the slit. Move it side to side, up and down, so it looks like the characters are sharing a silly floating gift!
7. Video your fun animation of the characters exchanging their bizarre gift.

Take it further

• Instead of one gift, have the characters exchange a few strange objects.
• Use small boxes, cardboard, or clay to build the mountains and trees so your characters are in a mini 3D world (Diorama). Slide the gift through the scene.

• Paper or cardstock
• Pencils and erasers
• Colouring materials: crayons, markers, coloured pencils, or paints
• Magazines, printed pictures, or drawings
• Scissors
• Glue or tape
• Lollipop sticks, straws, or thin wooden sticks
• Ruler or something to help guide a straight slit (An adult to help safely cut the slit)
• Optional: phone or tablet to video the animation