Hand cut paper artwork, collage. Beachamwell, Norfolk

Joni Smith is a contemporary artist known for her paper and installation works that explore and rework the map. Originally from Leamington Spa, raised in the hills of North Wales and currently residing in Norwich - a fascination with sense of place threads through her work. Smith completed her Masters in Textile Culture at Norwich University of the Arts in 2007 with distinction. Since then she has worked freelance, taking part in group and solo exhibitions locally and throughout the UK.

Smith playfully uses collage and cutting techniques to create new associations between different locations. Her work is predominantly concerned with the map. But for the Avant Gardeners exhibition Smith has temporarily left the map, and focused in on specific locations within the theme of the great British garden. In these works, she has continued to follow set rules within her work; taking original images and reconfiguring them so they appear distorted, encoded, or scrambled, with sometimes two or more locations being pushed together to create a new, ethereal landscape.