Images: Anne Noble Photographs From Antarctica
As the retrospective of Anne's work, States of Grace, at City Gallery makes clear, Anne is an artist who works in series exploring ideas in depth before moving onto a new field on inquiry. Her experience as artist-in-residence in Antarctica has produced three key themes which shape the work produced:
1. The white landscapes which explore the effect of light on white and the challenges of photographing a white landscape when all the ususal spatial references of foreground and background flatten out. These are photographs which look at what you see when you're not seeing much at all. They are at once sublime and ironic - sublimely beautiful but ironic in that they point to romantic notions about landscape.
2. Mapping the land: Antarctica has never been a human landscape; people have never lived there permanently. This body of work investigates what people do in this landscape - it is mainly scientific work that is carried out.
3. The conventional depictions of Antarctica: many of our ideas about Anarctica are shaped by the images we have seen - cute penguins, giant icebergs, heroic explorers. Anne's work questions how reliable these kinds of depictions are in conveying the actual reality of the south pole environment.
It is wonderful to be able to see a new body of work like this Antarctic series in the context of the large retrospective at City Gallery. We hope you can see both shows.
Sotheybys New York is conducting its first-ever online exhibition/auction of Australian and New Zealand photography and an Anne Noble image has been selected for the invitation and poster promoting. This can be seen at www.alisonholland.com
For more information please contact Alison Bartley
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