Paul Noble

Taking inspiration from scrolls, artifacts, antiquities, and drafts from around the world, Paul Noble (b. 1963) has crafted a career-long drawing project, Nobson Newtown, exploring stories, images, and architectures of a fantastical city. Hovering between a wasteland and a utopia, Noble’s gesamtkunstwerk has been crafted between buildings, peoples, dreams, and typography to capture the melancholy of urbanity. A maverick amongst the British art scene, Noble has masterfully synergised a diaspora of references into a humanless city filled with human emotion and shortcomings. 

Noble was born in Northumberland and attended Sunderland Polytechnic and Humberside College of Higher Education, graduating in 1986. Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2012, his monumental collection of drawings has brought Noble’s works to museums and galleries such as: Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2001), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2002), Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2003), New Museum, New York (2003), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico (2004), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2005), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2009), Tate Britain, London (2010), and Kunsthalle Münster, Germany (2010-11), among others. He lives and works in London.