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From an early age, Joanne Tinker has been captivated by the small, the overlooked, and the discarded. What began as childhood shoeboxes filled with ideas and notebooks bursting with saved trinkets grew into a lifelong practice of transforming everyday materials into something precious. While studying at Art College, a pivotal textiles tutor encouraged her to create using whatever she could find, objects from home, her backpack, even litter bins. This sparked a creative evolution that brought Joanne’s “stash of dusty butterflies and desiccated paperclips” to life.
Rooted in the principles of recycling and reinvention, Joanne’s work reimagines ordinary objects such as metal bottle tops, acupuncture tubes, confectionery wrappers and aluminium cans. Chocolate foil wrappers have become her signature material, not for a love of chocolate, but for their extraordinary potential: their colour, delicacy, texture and surprising strength. Through meticulous repetition, she unwraps one form and recreates another, building collections defined by multiples, miniatures and a playful sense of uniformity that echoes her childhood fascinations.
Joanne’s work has garnered international recognition. Her recent pieces have been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, while her artworks are held in the permanent collections of the New York Museum of Art & Design and The White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney. Earlier works are displayed at the National Science Museum in London. She has created commissions for private collectors, cruise liners, Hampton Court Flower Show Gardens, and the TV production of Dennis Potter’s Cold Lazarus. Her practice has been widely featured in newspapers and magazines and is represented internationally by the Woolf Gallery, London.
Born in Nottingham in 1969 and raised in Johannesburg and later Leeds, Joanne stayed true to her name, Tinker, by training in metalwork. She earned a First Class degree in Silversmithing and Jewellery from Birmingham in 1992 before establishing her own studio practice, first in Harrogate and later in west London. Now living and working in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, she continues to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, inviting viewers to see value, beauty and wonder in the everyday.