Anne Noble

Overview

Anne Noble is a leading contemporary New Zealand photographer producing images renowned for their beauty, poetry, and conceptual rigour.

Her practice is characterised by the presentation of substantial, frequently overlapping, bodies of work investigating subjects with which she has a deep interest and personal connection. Raised in Whanganui, she wanted to understand more of its great river and the people inhabiting its banks – hence the Wanganui River series which first brought her to national attention in 1980. Raised a Catholic, she was interested in women who dedicated themselves to a contemplative life - hence on her youthful overseas travel, the contemplatives in their silent Benedictine monastery in London.

Similarly the internationally acclaimed series Ruby’s Room, 1998 – 2006, which is in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, grew out of her desire as an artist mother to represent childhood in a non-cliched way.

Noble’s Antarctic series, mostly developed between 2001 and 2014, is undoubtedly the longest and most broad-ranging, multi-thematic investigation by any artist of how we see that continent. In visits to Antarctic centers around the world and over three visits to Antarctica itself, one as US National Science Foundation Arts Fellow, she critiqued the represention of Antactica as a pristine wilderness of icebergs and penguins and heroic explorers.

A common theme across her different bodies of work is how we perceive and understand the natural world. This extends to a broader interest in what it means to make art in the age of the Anthropocene and how art can contribute to scientific discussions, debate and action.

Recent projects have explored the place and role of bees and, currently, trees in the environment. Her images look at the way photography’s seemingly straight depiction of reality can operate metaphorically to suggest invisible content and alternative perspectives. Her work never simply describes what it purports to show whether person, landscape or bee or tree.

Noble’s work raises questions about the role of the artist photographer. Her images challenge and create a fresh way of viewing the world. As she has said: “I like the magic of photography and its capacity to align the surface appearances of the world with an interior experience of time, memory, and being that exists beyond the visible.”


We have access to Anne Noble’s full catalogue of work, beyond what can be seen on this website. Please contact the gallery for more information. 

Bio

Anne Noble is full-time artist and Professor Emeritus / Fine Art (Photography) at Massey University College of Creative Arts, Toi Rauwharangi. She is the recipient of numerous awards including an Arts Foundation Laureate Award and a New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to photography. She has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and her work is in collections throughout the world.