Currently Reading: Tim Noble & Sue Webster – Wasted Youth (2006, Rizzoli, New York)
I borrowed this book from the University library this acquaint myself with Noble & Webster’s back catalogue and find more about how they source their rubbish.
The book depicts earlier light works (1996-2004) and light projected rubbish assemblages (1998-2003) as well as welded scrap metal pieces (2004-5) and resin figures (1997/2000). The large format of the book is akin to a 12 inch LP and is dedicated mainly to glossy images of the works and two essays by British curator Norman Rosenthal, and New York gallerist Jeffrey Deitch.
http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/wasted_youth.html
In the first essay at the back of this book by Norman Rosenthal, The Magic Arts of Noble & Webster – Tim and Sue, Rosenthal proposes that “an anti-aesthetic of vulgarity rules on the surface of their work” and discusses their skill – “aspects that are never – as is often the case nowadays, and historically – farmed out to studio assistants of even to craftsmen.”
“There is an extraordinary sense of craft and technical virtuosity that is both hard-won and has a self-self and improvisational quality, achieved largely through arduous trial and error.”
He mentions that the trash they use in their work is arbitrarily collected. On sourcing material for the scrap metal works, he mentions that the metal was scrounged from Sir Anthony Caro’s studio (with great irony).
On their self-portrayal in their work, Rosenthal asserts that Noble & Webster only depict themselves, refusing all requests from those who might want to have their own portraits made out of rubbish.
The second, longer, biographical account Black Magic by Jeffrey Deitch outlines their collaborative practice from meeting at Nottingham Trent University in 1986 to the current practice at the time of publication.
He cites the local carnival in Nottingham as a source of inspiration and material with its tacky displays and flashing lights. “Tim and Sue would spend time foraging for strange pieces which they would then assemble into sculpture.”
Deitch notes that the artists travelled to Turkey and the US on summer breaks whilst at university “touring junk yards foraging for discarded parts and dragging sacks of junk back to England.”
In 1990, the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds secured a studio for them at Dean Clough in Halifax where they made welded assemblages. After university they moved to Bradford, initially avoiding London, “absorbing themselves in the ‘rubbish landscape’ of the city.”
On the British Rubbish show at Independent Art Space, London, in 1996, Deitch accounts that they were invited by gallerist Max Wigram to curate a group show, but frustrated by the lack of a show of their own work, uninvited the lined-up artists. (the exhibition invite was “British Rubbish in tomato sauce” in the style of a label for tinned baked bins: http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/tnsw_exhibitions/british_rubbish_invite.jpg )
Dirty White Trash (with Gulls) (1998) was made from empty packaging of everything they ate, drank, smoked and otherwise consumed collected over 6 months and dumped in a pile on the studio floor. “The artists’ concept was to construct a work out of the remains of all the products that they needed to survive during the work’s creation. […] Despite its formalist logic Dirty White Trash (with Gulls) also recalls the radical anti-form attitude of the toughest scatter art and Alan Suicide’s punk sculptures of random piles of electronic debris.”
Cheap ‘n’ Nasty (2000) was assembled from piles of cheap and nasty tiys and household junk bought from the ‘everything for £1’ shops in the East End of London.
The installation The Undesirables (2000) involved the transportation of a mountain of garbage collected from the streets of the East End into one of the grandest galleries in the Royal Academy.
Falling Apart (2001) was made from objects broken and thrown in fights resulting from the financial pressures in The Dirty House studio project.
Kiss of Death (2003) was a choice of rats, crows and other scavengers; “the lowest form of animal life.”
