Tim & Sue Noble & Webster

Stroud, United Kingdom, 1966 / Leicester, United Kingdom, 1967

These two artists met in 1986 at Nottingham Trent University, where they were both studying Fine Arts. Since then they have lived and worked together in London. The psychology of perception may be defined as the basis for their work, reflected in the gathering of objects from everyday life, stuffed animals and even rubbish, to create assemblages onto which they direct light, giving rise to projections of shadows that are identifiable with reality. They are the result of this process of transformation of the object they work on in order to try and define how the human being perceives an abstract image and ascribes a meaning to it, turning it into a figurative shape. Animals and human shapes frequently become the self-portrait of the two artists and form part of their compositions, which evoke anything ranging from violence and sex to romanticism or things twee.

In parallel, they have developed other paths of creation based on the one hand on research into the symbols of pop culture and advertising, and the conversion into art of archetypal forms of today’s society such as money, tattoos or phrases like “I Love You”. All this is expressed in their light sculptures, always with a critical view of the consumer culture, sculptures based also on anti-art with their punkinfluenced anti-monuments created using a mixture of opposing elements.

Museums and art centres where they have exhibited their creations since the 1990s: Deste Foundation, Athens (2000), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre (MoMA PS1), New York (2003), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (2004), CAC Málaga (2005), Triumph Gallery, Moscow, (2009), the British Museum, London (2008–2009), and the National Portrait Gallery, London (2010–2011), among others. Moreover, their contribution to contemporary British art was acknowledged through the Arken Prize (2007), awarded by the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen. Their work forms part of the permanent collections of museums, institutions and private collections such as the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Artis-François Pinault, France, the Honart Museum, Teheran, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Olbricht Collection, Berlin, the Saatchi Collection, London, the Samsung Museum, Seoul, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

E.B.

Works in the collection