David Noonan

Born in 1969, Australia

Lives and works in London

Approaching image making with an auteur’s indulgence, David Noonan pulls images from photographs, film stills and documentary footage, blows them up and screen-prints them in high-contrast monochrome. He then slices and tears them and collages them together into fantastical new compositions. The resulting ghostly presences have echoes of Surrealism, German expressionist film and Dadaist theatre, while feeling wholly contemporary in conception.

Using the liturgy of art itself as a departure point for invention, Noonan conceives his work as ‘documentation’ of plausible performances. His casts of characters are positioned as participators in elaborate artworks that invoke covert and futuristic rituals, while also feeling dreamy, theatrical and strangely insular. With their grainy texture and exaggerated features, Noonan’s work explores the inner workings of memory, connotation, and sentiment. His amalgamations and textures resonate with a psychic force, producing fictional histories and imaginary landscapes that provoke, disquiet and charm.

David Noonan has exhibited in many important institutes including The Contemporary Art Museum, Missouri, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York and National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.