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24/9/2000

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

Deste Foundation, Athens

Masters of the universe

Works from the Dakis Joannou Collection

Tim Noble (b. 1966) and Sue Webster (b.1967) are among the most celebrated of the emerging generation of British artists. A couple in life as well as art they are perhaps one of the most interesting examples of how the two are inextricably intertwined.

Noble and Webster have become known from their silhouetted self-portraits made out of heaps of rubbish. They exploit the mundane and the kitsch and transform the most humble materials into complex and visually arresting installations and sculptures. At the same time they use the genre of self-portraiture to comment as well as undermine the cult of the celebrity artist and the art world hype that surrounded British art in the 90s. Dirty White Trash (with Gulls)

(1998) is an installation made out of six months of trash from the food consumed by the artists during the time it took to make the piece. It consists of a vast accumulation of domestic rubbish which is lit by a slide projector to reveal a perfect shadow portrait of the artists lazily enjoying a glass of wine and a cigarette. This is recycling at its most inventive and sophisticated. Original Sinners

(2000), is a hyper-kitsch fountain made out of artificial fruit, 99 cent store junk, faux stone plastic ornamental bowls and a pump mechanism that trickles cooking oil, which similarly casts deliberately sexualised shadow of the couple on the wall. As well as making a direct reference to the 16th century painter Arcimboldo and his famous fruit and vegetable portraits, the work - a lusciously saccharine sculpture - is a witty comment on Baroque and rococo excess, Victorian tastelessness and sexual overstatement. London Swings

(1997) pokes fun at the overly hyped Cool Britannia spirit of the 90s. Taking the well known 1997 cover of British Vanity Fair which featured Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit - icons of Brit Pop - as their point of departure, they have created a sarcastic poster collage by replacing their own faces with the original image thus creating a tongue-in-cheek parody on celebrity. Also in the show are two flashy wall-mounted light sculptures - I Love You, (2000) and Excessive Sensual Indulgence

(1997) - made of cheap light bulbs which reference popular culture at its tackiest. Inspired by Las Vegas style faux-glam as well as neon signs, they exploit the vacuousness of cheap casino glitz to arrive at a dazzling, iconic, and decidedly anti-minimalist approach to sculpture. Through their tongue-in-cheek approach to art and by deliberately drawing on the cheap, the mundane, the banal, the tacky and the kitsch Noble and Webster have created their very own brand of punk pop aesthetic: a trashy wonderland where art world subversion meets Harlequin romance. Their work is as much about the aestheticisation of banality and excessive consumerism as it is about exposing the relentless hype of art world politics. At the same time it offers a completely new take on the tradition of portraiture as well as the idea that something can be made out of almost anything. Tim Noble and Sue Webster will also be included in Apocalypse at the Royal Academy in September.Their work is also featured in the Saatchi and Joop Collections

Opening Hours Monday - Friday 11:00 am - 12:00 midnight Saturday 12:00 noon - 4:00 pm Closed Sundays and Holidays

The DESTE Foundation's Centre for Contemporary Art is located at 8 Omirou Street, Neo Psyhiko. Omirou Street leads off Kifissias Avenue at no. 264.

For more information please call at +01 6729460.

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