David Noo­nan
Eight Line Poem

David Noo­nan draws an anal­o­gy between the ambi­gu­i­ty of the title of this, his lat­est exhi­bi­tion, ​‘Eight Line Poem’, and the con­tent of the works them­selves. ​“I real­ly didn’t want to pin down these pic­tures… each is dif­fer­ent, a type of arche­type whether it be a sun, or a priest; they feel like they are lines in a poem.” As David con­tin­ues, ​“It’s always some­thing, from some­where…”

These found images of Pol­ish and Cuban film posters from the late 20^th Cen­tu­ry are medi­at­ed by Noonan’s use of the mono­type. Noo­nan has tak­en the already ​“sur­re­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal, painter­ly and uncon­ven­tion­al” graph­ic design of the orig­i­nal posters and abstract­ed them fur­ther through process and chance onto sub­tly coloured pas­tel fab­rics, from pink and grey to green. These works con­tin­ue his ongo­ing inter­est in the lim­i­nal and tem­po­ral; in the dia­logue between fig­u­ra­tion and abstrac­tion and a non-lin­ear sense of time; in ambi­gu­i­ties, con­tra­dic­tions, and in-between spaces.

In ​‘Eight Line Poem’, Noo­nan explores how print­ing and paint­ing process­es behave togeth­er and influ­ence each oth­er to form a visu­al and mate­r­i­al har­mo­ny. The gallery instal­la­tion opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty of imag­ined nar­ra­tives between the works. From the raven to the king, the hyp­no­tist to the priest, the sun to the desert, the heart to the moth…

Through their abstrac­tion, Noo­nan poet­i­cis­es the works new ambi­gu­i­ty, mak­ing each image icon­ic rather than real, their ori­gins and mean­ing obscure and ethe­re­al.

David Noo­nan was born in Aus­tralia in 1969 and now lives and works in Lon­don. He received his BFA from Bal­larat Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege and under­took his post grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Vic­to­ri­an Col­lege of the Arts, His work has been pre­sent­ed in numer­ous solo exhi­bi­tions includ­ing the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Chisen­hale Gallery, Lon­don; Anna Schwartz Gallery, Mel­bourne; Aus­tralian Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Art, Mel­bourne; Tar­raWar­ra Muse­um of Art, Healesville; Con­tem­po­rary Art Muse­um, St. Louis; Rosen­wald-Wolf Gallery, Philadel­phia; Foxy Pro­duc­tion, New York; Kor­dan­sky Gallery, Los Ange­les; HOTEL, Lon­don; Mod­ern Art, Lon­don; and Xavier Hufkens, Brus­sels.

David Noonan’s work is held in numer­ous inter­na­tion­al pub­lic col­lec­tions, includ­ing The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, New York; Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Chica­go; Dal­las Muse­um of Art, Dal­las; Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, Los Ange­les; MAM­CO – Mod­ern and Con­tem­po­rary Art Muse­um, Gene­va; Nation­al Gallery of Cana­da, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toron­to; Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Can­ber­ra; Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne; Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Syd­ney; Art Gallery of Bal­larat; Mona – Muse­um of Old and New Art, Hobart and The British Coun­cil, London.