2 Dimensional Life of Her. 2 Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 1

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1 2 Dimensional Life of Her 2 Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 1

2 2 2 Dimensional Life of Her A Visual-based performance work by Fleur Elise Noble

3 2 Dimensional Life of Her is a performance work made of drawing, animation, puppetry, projection and paper. The audience enters a space pregnant with possibility, becoming a part of a multi-dimensional real time artwork that breathes with life. Over the duration of this 40 minute performance, tensions build between surfaces and realities, as the act of creation separates itself from the artist who is responsible for its beginnings. Noble not only deconstructs her art, she shreds, incinerates and rebuilds it, milking the full potential of today s multimedia technology like an Andy Warhol for a new era Patrick McDonald, The Advertiser, Adelaide 20/5/09 The audience enters a space littered with papery chaos. Upon large paper surfaces a story unfolds. Projected image and naturalistic soundscapes traverse the space between, and the space inside, deceptively empty surfaces. An artist is confronted by an inability to control her surroundings; every mark she makes somehow escapes her, or grows into a new form with an agenda of its own. New realities present new dilemmas, breaking through everything that is thought to be solid. Even her own surface escapes her. Her marks take flight, and their history, her truth, is replaced by contradictory propositions. 2 Dimensional Life of Her posits a richly imagined parallel world where drawings reproduce themselves, drift between surfaces and move in and out of three dimensions. Sheets of paper suspended in space appear thickly laden with marks, only to be scrubbed clean, revealing windows into yet another parallel reality where the laws of physics are different still. A densely layered line drawing is given an alternative genesis as a monoprint, stamped from the ink-soaked face of a puppet. Time compresses; a drawing that we know to be built up through the laborious accumulation of marks is seen to be created in an instant. 2 Dimensional Life of Her eschews the concrete reality of studio practice, where work is often hard won through labour, self-doubt and ennui, in favour of a wholly fictional model. The artist s studio is reimagined as a site of magic, alchemy and Promethean creation. Amongst all this, the artist appears as a kind of sorcerer s apprentice, barely in control of the elemental forces she has unleashed. 4 2 Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 5

4 Artist s Notes Drawing has become the base from where and through which I explore other things. I learnt a language through drawing that I speak in everything I do. I make pictures and objects, static and animated, in the search for something I did not know how to think into existence. This is the one continuous thread that has run through my time of making things. A continuum based on the last mark. Work driven by process rather than design. Found through acts of decision, erasure, trust and doubt. Not so much working towards something specific, but rather through and around a process that is void of a predesignated or discernible finish line. 2 Dimensional Life of Her grew out of a desire to find a way for drawing to exist in the world as a transitory process rather than a finished object. It is about venturing far enough into an idea or act until it becomes new and interesting. To find a way to allow the viewer to be suspended in the space between the maker and the made, where everything is in a constant state of becoming. This work brings the potential of this space to life. I see this work as an ongoing process. The space between the maker and the made remains a mysterious place laden with possibility. Through this work I hope to open up this place of mystery to the viewer, and present them with something other than a conclusion. Fleur Elise Noble is an Australian Director/ Creator of visual-based theatre experiences. She works with the mediums of drawing, animation, puppetry, projection and performance to create work that is specifically focused on the performative possibilities of drawing and process. In 2006 she received her Bachelor of Visual Art (Hons) from Adelaide Central School of Art, where she studied on a full scholarship for four years. She has also studied in New York, and worked with a number of arts, theatre and multi-media professionals in Australia and New Zealand. Fleur has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards for her drawings, paintings, animations and performance-based works. Her work has been exhibited in established and makeshift gallery and theatre spaces around Australia and overseas. 6 2 Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 7

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6 Set without projection Section of set with projection 10 2 Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 11

7 One of the most thought provoking comments that anyone has ever made about my work came from a 7 year old. We were looking at one of my line drawings and she pointed out it looks like you just scribbled on her face. I was shocked by the profundity of what she was saying. She was telling me that there was a real face underneath the lines, and that I was not really all that clever because all I did was scribble on it. I loved this so much, the idea that there is something real beneath the abstraction of the real. It made me question what it is that we respond to when looking at a drawing or painting of a person, and question what it is the figurative artists are doing. Are they drawing people into the world? Or, just putting marks on paper? This comment inspired an ongoing visual conversation around the role of the twodimensional surface and its ability to present such engaging fiction, the relationship between an image and that which houses it, and the possibility for the flat void of unmarked paper to present deep and suggestive spaces Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 13

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10 Fleur Elise Noble Director/Creator Erica Field Mobile Projection Surface/Animation Assistant Jeremy Neideck Sound Design/Music Information pack and Booklet designed by Working Images Acknowledgements: I would like to thank all those who have contributed to and supported this project over the years. To name a few: Erica Field, Jeremy Neideck, Noel, Margaret, Shelagh and the Noble family, Johnnie Dady, Roy Ananda, Halley Jean, Tom Holt, Emma Bleaney, Yo, Will and Erin, Nigel and Robin McBride, Jason Cross, Anne Noble, Robert Larson, Simon Marek, Drew Raia Joyce / Working Images, Allan Smith / Gibson Group, Lee Cumberlidge / Insite Arts, Lynne Bradley and Simon Woods / Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre, Glen and Dylan / Pig Island Pictures, Adelaide Central School of Art, The New York Studio School of Drawing Painting and Sculpture, Arts SA, South Australian Youth Arts Board, Arts QLD, Brisbane Festival s Under The Radar, Metro Arts, The Experimental Art Foundation and The Australian Festival for Young People. Enquiries: Lee Cumberlidge Executive Producer Insite Arts +61(0) lee@insitearts.com.au PO Box 134, East Brunswick, VIC 3057 Photo Credits Anne Noble and Fleur Elise Noble Text Roy Ananda and Fleur Elise Noble Sections of text taken from an exhibition catalogue publication by the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide 18 2 Dimensional Life of Her Fleur Elise Noble 19

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