David Noonan: Stagecraft

Stagecraft brings together silkscreen collages on fabric, tapestries and film which David Noonan has made between 2015 and 2020. Noonan repurposes found photographic images from his extensive personal image archive to create images which are ambiguous, often with a focus on a solitary haunting figure. Black and white images appropriated from disparate sources including magazines relating to avant-garde theatre, film, design, architecture, dance and music are combined to create new compositions. Documentary images are transformed into fiction, suggesting the significance of theatricality and performance in the public realm. Noonan’s collage works have a shadowy sense of mystery, while the layering of the figurative and abstract imagery creates a tension between abstraction and representation, and between truth and illusion. Ballarat-born artist David Noonan lives and works in London. He is known for large-scale monochromatic collages on linen comprised of fabrics which are torn, folded, cut, stitched and combined with silkscreened images. Recently, Noonan has made tapestries in collaboration with Belgian weavers, which have allowed him to combine art and traditional craft techniques. Noonan has been the subject of solo exhibitions across the world and his work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums in Australia and internationally. David Noonan: Stagecraft is exclusive to the Art Gallery of Ballarat. David Noonan is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery (Melbourne), Roslyn Oxley9 (Sydney) and Modern Art (London).