Tim Noble & Sue Webster are among the most celebrated of the emerging generation of British artists. A couple in life as well as in art, they are perhaps one of the most interesting examples of how the two are inextricably intertwined.
Noble & Webster have become known from their silhouetted self-portraits made out of heaps of rubbish. Exploiting the mundane and the kitsch, they transform the most humble materials into complex and visually arresting installations and sculptures. By using the genre of self-portraiture, they also comment and undermine the cult of the celebrity artist and the art world hype surrounding British art in the ‘90s.
Their work is as much about the aesthetics of banality and excessive consumerism as it is about exposing the relentless hype of art world politics. It also offers a completely new take on the tradition of portraiture as well as the idea that something can be made out of almost anything. Through their tongue-in-cheek approach to art by deliberately drawing on the cheap, the mundane, the banal, the tacky and the kitsch, Noble & Webster have created their very own brand of punk pop aesthetic: a trashy wonderland where art world subversion meets Harlequin romance.
