Jo McDonald in her Edinburgh studio | Photography © Lydia Smith
Jo McDonald
Tapestry Artist
Jo McDonald reflects the spirit of this exhibition by reworking discarded books into new forms that honour their history, while giving them fresh life. Her work explores storytelling, history and shared experience, as she works with these books and their history infused with traces of the past – fingerprints, skin, dedications and scribbled notes –offering a glimpse into their earlier lives.
Her process of deconstructing and reassembling speaks to the reclamation of forgotten knowledge, transforming the old into something that bridges the past and present with creativity and purpose. Inspired by traditional weaving methods and construction, she uses wire and monofilament as the warp and paper as the weft.
The books are chosen for both their written content and their subtle tonal variations in colour. McDonald blends the pages much like a painter’s palette, mixing the dark browns of old books through mid-browns and creams of fiction, to the whites and creams of textbooks. She handles and cuts the books herself, ensuring the clean straight lines of the cut edges but also allowing time to feel and explore each page as she immerses herself in the experience of making.
Biography
Tapestry artist Jo McDonald lives, works and teaches in Edinburgh. Her artistic practice focuses on storytelling, history and shared experience. From an early age, she was fascinated by books; reading was a great comfort where she ventured into a world of escapism. As an adult, she has not lost this fascination with the written word. McDonald has experimented extensively with traditional tapestry weaving techniques using second-hand books and monofilament as an alternative medium to wools and threads. The possibilities of these materials continue to inspire her practice. Through a process of de-construction and re-construction, she creates new structures from aged materials which maintain their original history.
McDonald graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a Master of Fine Arts in Tapestry. She recently exhibited at Collect, Somerset House, London (2024), was short-listed for The Cordis Trust Prize for Woven Tapestry (2021 and 2015), received two Hope Scott Trust Awards (2019 and 2013), was granted a Creative Scotland Professional Development Award (2013) and won the Milly and Benno Schotz Award for best work submitted by a young sculptor at the Royal Glasgow Institute (2012). She has work held in Apex International Hotels in London, Amateras Foundation in Bulgaria, University of Aberdeen in Scotland and The Gallery of Szombathelyi in Hungary, as well as in private collections in UK, France, USA and South Africa.