Tim Noble and Sue Webster - Contemporary Art London Friday, October 13, 2006 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Modern Art, London; Private collection, New York

  • Exhibited

    Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, Instant Gratification, November 10 – December22, 2001 (another example exhibited); New York, P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, October 12-December 29, 2003 (similar example exhibited; illustrated); Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, April 21-September 6, 2004; Dresden, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Die Zehn Gebote: Politik - Moral – Gesellschaft, June 14, 2004-January 2, 2005 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    K. Farrington, “Tim Noble & Sue Webster”, NYArts Magazine, November/December, 2004, vol. 9, no. 11/12; C. Millis, “Art Junkies: Barry McGee and Noble & Webster take in the trash” , The Boston Phoenix, May 14-20, 2004 n.p.

  • Catalogue Essay

    If Tim Noble and Sue Webster are associated with any one particular medium above all others it is the animated electrical sign. Intentionally provocative, confrontational and over the top, Noble and Webster’s electronic signs are illuminated by hundreds of light bulbs shimmering and flashing in a resplendent glory that pays homage to the decadence and desire of Las Vegas.

    “[Las] Vegas is the phantasmagoric vulgar. We can exit our alienated relation to our own production to revel in a world where the scotch tape between material production and its means has been neatly burnished. Visitors to this service oriented oasis can experience something of ‘the cycle of abuse’ metaphor so familiar to viewers of daytime TV chat shows. Here ‘Everyman’ is an emperor, or at the very least, King,” (L. Johnson, taken from Gagosian Gallery, eds., Tim Noble and Sue Webster: Instant Gratification, Los Angeles, 2001, p. 11).

    If ‘everyman’ is emperor or king then money – the almighty dollar- could be considered his consort. The present lot $ tangibly manifests this idolatry of the dollar.

    “We are constantly looking for something that will take our breath away …Because if it does that to us, we’ve pushed it about as far as it will go…We make the work that we instinctively feel like making,” (Sue Webster in Boston Herald, May 2004, by Joanne Silver). “Beneath this twinkling, productive gaze we are free to play at ‘being ourselves’,” (L. Johnson, ibid).

17

$

2001
204 ice white turbo reflector caps, lamps, plastic bulb covers, daisy washers lightbulbs, lacquered brass and electronic sequencer (three-channel Shimmer effect)
72 x 48 x 10 in. (182.9 x 121.9 x 25.4 cm).
This work is from an edition of five.

Estimate
£150,000 - 200,000 Ω♠

Sold for £187,200

Contemporary Art

14 Oct 2006, 7pm
London