armstrong gallery
In collaboration with Caitlin Berry Fine Art and Lisa Armstrong Noble, we designed an exclusive, bespoke online gallery for the display of the artist’s work.
Assembly of Me:
New Figurative Works by Lisa Armstrong Noble
July 30 – September 13, 2020
Caitlin Berry Fine Art is delighted to present Assembly of Me: New Figurative Works by Lisa Armstrong Noble, featuring fifteen oil paintings on canvas and accompanying archival pigment prints, published by Old Town Editions. The exhibition is an Artsy online exclusive with bespoke virtual gallery installation views created by Montgomery + Townsend Architecture and Design. The exhibition is viewable on Artsy today through September 13, 2020. Virtual talks and other programming will be announced during the course of the exhibition.
Lisa Armstrong Noble defines assembly as a group of people gathered together for a common purpose. Through fifteen doll-like portraits, she explores her relationship to memories of formative childhood events, marked by feelings of tension, discomfort and development. These depictions position her as voyeur inside her own story. Noble’s Canadian prairie upbringing was one of humble means, punctuated by exposure to privilege and affluence that often left her feeling like an outsider to a seemingly more pleasant and comfortable world of ease and opportunity.
Installation View, Virtual Gallery Created by Montgomery + Townsend Architecture and Design.
Installation View, Anne & Scribbles (left), The Wiz (center), and
Marcy in Block Colors (right)
Assembly of Me marks a return to figuration for Noble, in which she aligns modes of previous exploration; fashion illustration, domestic interiors, the female figure and archetypes. The mise-en-scène and sartorial choices of her subjects become vital to the figure’s identity—every object a conduit for play between the artist and a fictitious version of herself. Each painting exists as a stylized self-portrait and an homage to the women who shaped Noble’s life.
The backdrop of Noble’s personal excavations is also deeply gendered. Noble remarks that her generation was raised on warped beauty ideals set forth by the omnipresent Barbie doll and Disney’s female protagonists. Noble’s figures explore these restrictive roles and denied agency while introducing the irony of women having thrived despite such narrow and unrealistic expectations.
Though based on memory, this body of work was not created without awareness of the present. Specifically, that social media empowers users to put forth a presence that is wholly aligned with the self, without apology. Beauty ideals are either falsely conveyed, perpetuating the cycle of unattainable physical standards, or smashed to bits and rendered moot by a new set of authors’ rules. Ultimately, Assembly of Me is hopeful for the future and offers a space for women to thrive in the face of their own upheavals and upsets, which are as uniquely personal as each of Noble’s “me’s”.
Lisa Armstrong Noble (American, b. 1973, Winnipeg, Canada) began her formal artistic training at the Alberta College of Art & Design in 1997. She moved to the United States in 1998 to complete her BFA at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington, D.C. Noble is a painter of memories from her upbringing, blending myth and reality into an acceptable framework that carries her into adulthood. The structures that punctuate the landscape of her youth and the objects and inhabitants of their interiors serve as markers along the path to exploring, and at times unearthing, her personal history.