Anne Noble

Anne Noble

Emerita Professor, Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts

Professor Anne Noble (Laureate), ONZM, is a photographer and curator whose work spans still and moving image, installation and international curatorial commissions. Over multiple projects Professor Noble has considered the significance of memory and imagination to personal and cultural narratives of place and belonging.

She has undertaken three projects in Antarctica supported by arts fellowships awarded by Creative New Zealand and the US National Science Foundation. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and the United States and is held in numerous national and international collections.

In 2003 Noble was awarded the Order of Merit for services to photography in New Zealand. In 2009 she was a recipient of a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate Award and was awarded the Massey University individual research medal

  • Expertise

    The imagination and representation of Antarctica; photography of land and place; landscape theory; contemporary documentary theory and practice; art and climate change; art/science collaboration; participative documentary methods; representation of childhood.

  • Research Highlights

    Ruby’s Room (1998 - 2007)
    The outcome of a sustained critical investigation into the imagination and representation of childhood, Ruby’s Room has been exhibited and published widely in New Zealand, Australia and Germany. It was selected as the keynote contemporary photography exhibition for the inaugural Paris Photoquai Biennale in 2007. Thirty photographs from the series were acquired by Te Papa Tongarewa for their collection in 2011. 

    Ice Blink (2011) Clouds: NZ
    A sole-authored photographic book, composed of parallel visual narratives of real and simulated Antarctic environments. Ice Blink challenges the visual and literary narratives that inform seeing, and representation of, Antarctica and reveals a popular Antarctic imaginary as the commercialised site of a compromised and devalued sublime. Ice Blink was exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne in 2008. Images from this series continue to feature in exhibitions internationally that focus on representations of the ice, tourism and climate change.

    At the End of the Earth  (2008)
    At the End of the Earth is a suite of projects undertaken in Antarctica in 2008 during a US National Science Foundation polar arts fellowship. Piss Poles, (2008) is a series of photographs of the yellow flags that mark approved sites for urinating outdoors. Bitch In Slippers, a collaboration with writer, Lloyd Jones and typographer, Sarah Maxey,wasexhibited at the City Gallery Wellington in 2012.  It comprised a collection of photographs of brightly coloured trucks with girls’ names and the monumental Spoolhenge, a stack of cable spools at the South Pole Station. Both series of images address the politics of Antarctic representation, challenge the palette by which Antarctica is known and draw attention to the gendered nature of our relationships to place.

    These Rough Notes (2012) Manhire, B., Noble, A., Meehan, N., Griffin, A. These Rough Notes (2012). VUP: Wellington.
    Drawing its title from one of the last pages of Robert Scott’s journal, this book and performance project is a collaboration between a poet, a musician and a photographer to commemorate the centenary of Scott’s death on the ice, and the Erebus tragedy. Utilising historic and contemporary photographs of exploration and discovery and images of the Erebus debris trail downloaded from the internet, the mixed sources reflect on the histories of Antarctic representation and offer an evocation of Antarctica haunted by human presence.

  • Qualifications

    BFA  (Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland)
    MFA (Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland)

  • Professional Affiliations

    New Zealand curator for the Musée du quai Branly Photoquai Biennales of 2009 and 2011.
    Australia and New Zealand curator for the Musée du quai Branly Photoquai Biennale 2013.
    Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

  • Supervision

    Maria O'Toole
    Visual Literacy: Drawing the Future

    In-progress

    Primary supervisor: Prof. Anne Noble
    Co-supervisor: Tim Brennan
    Advisor: Emma Febvre-Richards

     

    Susanne Bauer 
    The Pollinator Crisis

    Primary supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Heather Galbraith
    Co-supervisor: Prof. Anne Noble
    Co-supervisor: Dr. Cassandra Barnett 

     

    Nishioka Mizuho 
    A string of data: disrupting, altering and generating the photographic image

    Primary supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Wayne Barrar
    Co-supervisor: Prof. Anne Noble
    Co-supervisor: Prof. David Cross