Modern Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by David Noonan. This is David Noonan’s first solo show with Modern Art, and his first in London for four years.
David Noonan’s pictures are constructed from layers of material: scenes formed and reformed from fragments of images in rich and evocative combinations. It is not for its recognition, but for its look, its feel, and its sense of extravagant figurative posture or representation of material texture and pattern that he selects his source material. There are always figurative and abstract elements superimposed within each work, acting in concert to veil and reveal as they create a particular feel for character, image and shape. Noonan’s pictures present an ambiguous and only notionally articulated narrative embraced in a pictorial idea of representing theatrical performance in which the players often seem to portray, rather than feel, emotion.
For this exhibition at Modern Art, David Noonan presents nine new silkscreen works on linen collage, and a suite of paper collages on linen. These silkscreen works on linen layer monochrome images of what appear to be documentary and theatrical origin with partially transparent veils of imaged boro textile – a traditional and humble Japanese utilitarian patchwork fabric that has over time become prized almost entirely for an aesthetic virtue. This imaged boro lends a structure to his compositions: a trompe l’oeil effect of loose fabric that is enacted visually and physically as fragments of printed linen are folded and patched over each work’s surface. The sequence of pictures in Noonan’s show are inhabited by characters variously enacting moments of quiet introspection and scenes of extroverted performance – putting on make up, dressing up, and acting-out sexually ambiguous identities. As the large pictures combine and overlay collected fragments into a single compositional space, Noonan’s paper collages almost clinically extract the fundamental components of his picture-making, laying bare the intuitive combination of abstract and figurative elements. Here we can see the building blocks, and share in Noonan’s care for the act of collecting as an act of putting things together.
David Noonan was born in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, in 1969. He lives and works in London. David Noonan’s work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, USA (2011); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, VIC, Australia (2009); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2008); and Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France (2007). Noonan’s work has been included in the recent group exhibitions 10 ways to look at the past, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC, Australia (2011); Tableaux, MAGASIN — Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (2011); Secret Societies. To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silence, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, travelling to CAPC de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (2011); British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary, travelling to Hayward Gallery, London, Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth (2010−2011); The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival: 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia (2010); Before & After Science, 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia (2010); Glasgow International 2010, Washington Garcia at Mitchell Library, Glasgow (2010); The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art, Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2009−2010); Altermodern, Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); and Tokyo Redux, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2007). A new monograph on David Noonan’s work is published by JRP Ringier this Autumn.