River Shields 

The growing complexity in Joanne’s work, its strong political resonance and its developing conceptual depth, bode well for this self-taught artist. Her process toward completion of these works includes using photographic prints of Mandandanyi shield designs with Gunggari text on the canvas (with archival inks) as a base. Over this imagery she develops a surface texture of river lines painted in acrylic. There is a new tension in these works, wrought by their new elements – they have a brittle sensibility that evokes the lack of resolution to the problems of regionally-based indigenous peoples in Australia.

Extracts from essay ‘Blood River Black Water’ by Louise Martin-Chew 2010