Joanna works across photography, installation, projection and print to explore her interest in architectural and city space, permanency and perspective. Her practice does not accept the city as it is, but rather an artistic canvas awaiting exploration into the hidden potential with which it offers. Her work is an attempt to engage the city user with their city; to awaken new and unforeseen perspectives, to reflect upon the conditions of our surroundings and invite us to negotiate the city, to experience it and to read its messages. Her more recent works perform Michel de Certeau’s resistant re-writing of the city by opening up a multitude of creative opportunities for alternate engagement [existing far beyond the conventions of architectural and urban planning]. In extending our vision beyond these conventions, not only can we comprehend the creative potential of the city, we are made more aware of the integral nature of representation and construction of our city spaces.
Consistently throughout her practice is a manifestation of the fold, a process based response and experimentation with de Certeau’s processes of resistance, as well as an exploration of the limits that regulate our urban spaces and provoke alternate strategies for addressing the way city spaces are constructed, regulated and negotiated. The fold produces a dynamic space where infinite possibilities, processes and virtuality can unfold across diverse architectural landscapes with no definable beginning or end; rather, an evolving continuum.
(Portrait of Artist by Moritaka Suzuki)
Williams has Bachelor (Hons) of Visual Arts majoring in Print from Sydney College of the Arts, Arts Administration and Cultural Development Certificate from St George School of Fine Arts and Certificate 2 in Screen Printing from Ultimo TAFE. She has undergone RSA, AV install, WHS, dementia support and First Aid training.
Outside of her practice Joanna is Gallery Assistant & Studio Technician for Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios, children’s visual art teacher at numerous fine art schools, videographer and editor and an independent community arts facilitator. She has produced projects in collaboration with Lane Cove & Willoughby City Councils, Anglican Retirement Village, BioPak, Vivid and Macquarie Bank.