Generic domestic interiors and suburban sites such as homes, highways and airports are reduced to flat blocks of colour divested of linear perspective and often repeated in tonal variations. This reduction and repetition draws from the symmetric perfection of real estate advertisements and points to the aesthetic monotony of the Australian suburban landscape. An uncanny anonymity issues from Lamb’s purification of colour, dimensionality and form as everyday environments seem at once familiar and unfamiliar. Moreover, the surface of the paintings, seemingly untouched by the artist’s hand, effuses a clinical objectivity that is mirrored in the empty, unpeopled scenes. As a result the works omit a feeling of disconnectedness, impartial to the inclusion of human interaction.

Lamb has participated in institutional exhibitions such as Contour 556, Canberra Art Biennial, ACT (2022); The View from Here, Art Gallery of Western Australia (2021); Making her Mark: Selected from the Collection, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2020); The Real Thing, Murray Art Museum, Albury (2017); The Triumph of Modernism, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & TarraWarra Museum of Art (2015); Sublime Point: The Landscape in Painting, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Gymea (2014); PICA Salon 2013, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2013); Holiday and Memory, Penrith Regional Gallery and Lewers Bequest, Sydney (2013); Built, Art Gallery of Western Australia (2009); and Parallel Lives: Australian Painting Today, TarraWarra Biennial, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2006).

Collections include Art Gallery of Western Australia; TarraWarra Museum of Art, VIC; Parliament House, Canberra; Macquarie University, Sydney; La Trobe University, Melbourne; Edith Cowan University, Perth; University of Western Australia; Muerdoch University, Perth. Joanna has been a finalist in numerous art prizes, most recently, the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize 2023 and Bankwest Contemporary Art Prize 2015 - one of the most prestigious prizes for Western Australian contemporary artists.