Joanne McDonald

Born Paisley, 1973. Joanne has completed a first class BA (Hons) in Tapestry and is currently studying for an MFA in tapestry at the Edinburgh College of Art. Her work is about history, history in general, her history. She uses found objects, usually second-hand books, newspapers, journals and their built-in history is her basic attraction, the source of their power as objects.

She uses all types of printed material, and acts as editor in the recycling of this. She is in charge of the process of change. Her role is the most important in this transformation. She takes the material, sifts through it, evaluates it, selects, reshuffles, changes, reconstructs and thus produces a new piece of work.

The deconstructed books, paper etc. are still redolent with their original history, but they have not only a new form and an entirely new visual identity, but also interpret our understanding of them through their incomprehension as written forms. From now on they will have a new history as well as their former one.

The discovery of how a material can be manipulated and, the qualities and possibilities of the material itself excites her and this often leads to re-produce on a large scale. The visual look is paramount: it is about the pattern, the colour and the edges.

She is intrigued by Tom Phillip's "Humament", his reworking of a Victorian novel; studied Christian Boltanski and the idea that the truth of the past is unknowable; interested in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and wondered about the book as a dangerous object; and finally, pondered on books as something which carry information from one time to another, but often as open to misrepresentation or as incomprehensible as her re-workings.