David Noonan transforms black and white or sepia found imagery into striking collages and large-scale silk-screened tableaux on linen or films. He collects photographs, archival documents and magazines and books relating to utopian collectives in the 1960s and 70s, theatre and dance performances, or art education, and layers selected images with others of plants, animals and buildings. These depicted rituals are recycled, barely recognizable, reinventions of inventions past, time-traveling, and any sense of time and place is blurred or displaced. Multiple appropriations blend realism, mystery and myth.
Read MoreThe fabrics he uses as the ground for the silk-screens are rough in texture and often patched or folded. Many contain printed patterns that are inspired by Japanese textiles. Noonan also produces panelled, figurative sculptures in which cut out silhouettes of performers act out grand gestures.
Born in Australia, Noonan currently resides in London and has had over forty solo exhibitions worldwide including those at the Chisenhale Gallery in London; Palais de Tokyo in Paris; The Renaissance Society; Chicago; Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art; Florida; PS1 Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita; Tate Britain; Saatchi Gallery, London; Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble; Centre d'art contemporain, Paris; 7th Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey; Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. His work has been reviewed in Art Review, Art Asia Pacific, Art & Australia, Art in America, Modern Painters, among other publications. .
Recent group exhibitions and biennales include The British Art Show 7 (2010), The Biennale of Sydney (2010), Altermodern, the Tate Triennial (2009) and the Gwangju Biennale (2008). A solo exhibition of Noonan’s work curated by Dominique Malone was shown at the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis in September 2011 and Noonan's work was included in the The Age of Aquarius at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago.
David Noonan’s work is held in important public and private collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the British Arts Council, UK, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the Sender Collection, New York and the Rubell Collection, Florida.
