“It’s really about looking at images and putting them together, and looking at how they behave,” says David Noonan in our latest podcast series Artists Abroad, talking with artists who’ve moved to London and what the move has meant for their practice—while also chatting about the art itself.
Ballarat-born, Noonan has lived and worked in London since 2005. He’s acclaimed and internationally exhibited for his stunning black-and-white works created from both figurative and abstract found images that stem from theatre, dance, subcultures and social media. The works span video to collage to tapestry, looking at the interplay of the figurative and abstract, but also more emotive states like mystery and the uncanny.
Noonan’s 2022 Australian show at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Only when it’s cloudless, functioned like one large installation where the works often capture moments not necessarily of performance, but when the mask drops. There is something both defiant and vulnerable at play.
Noonan talks about growing up in Ballarat, his trips to London and his eventual move, and if he feels leaving Australia has changed the trajectory of his practice and career. We also chat about how Noonan creates his works, questions on authenticity, and how he’s recently bought colour into his practice.
MASKEN
David Noonan
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
21 July – 19 August 2023
This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.
Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
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In an expansive show at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, seven leading Australian ceramic artists have reinvigorated one of Australia’s oldest museum collections by creating a contemporary potter’s quarter—known as the ‘kerameikos’ in Ancient Greece.
In a conversation with Lauren Carroll Harris for her survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Julie Rrap discusses 40 years of challenging the male gaze, and the cultural invisibility of the ageing female body.
With their iconic painted poker machines and installations, notably featured in the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, the Tennant Creek Brio are now taking over Melbourne with a new show at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
