Stanley Street Gallery

Viewing Room
Artist

Ali Noble, Double Rainbow, Brother Ocean/Father Sun, 2025, Hand sewn - Found umbrella, velveteen, velvet, thread, glue, dowling, glass, 162 x 230 cm, Image Document

Double Rainbow, A Return to Magic

Portals, frames and curtains are gateways to other realms and ancient cosmologies; magical alternatives, where I wonder whether I will get to meet with my brother again in the afterlife. Maybe it’s magical thinking. I’m ok with that.

My magic is a posture and a worldview, a survival tactic for sensitive seekers. It’s a way to live in the world where ‘knowledge’ is routinely insufficient. Magic reroutes reverence for rationality towards enchantment and un-knowing. Reclaim your imagination! says magic. Remember when you last felt awe? whispers magic.

Does everything need to make sense all the time? Stop making sense!

Do we need to understand everything? I don’t know!

Who has all the answers? They are Liars, Liars, pants on fires.

Colour cast her spell on me. So did sisters Symbolism and Decoration. Cloth has always charmed me, a matrilineal legacy and a tactile sorceress. My favourites, Velvet and Velveteen, are elegant tricksters and perception babes, always dancing, shifting and shimmering.

Colour, Symbolism, Decoration and Cloth have recently fortified me. Tiny antidotes to big sorrows, they quietly asked how can I possibly sustain myself without finding (some) joy. It’s a mystery to me how such buoyant work emerged. A cavernous existential rupture alchemised into a curious, tactile assemblage.

There’s animism to my method. The materials and colours emit their own life force, they speak to me. Sometimes I receive a transmission, a frequency, and a colour or material will light up my spirit, so I follow that sensation. The natural ephemera, gems, rocks and shells, appear as elemental companions, assistants to the material magic.

My magic is a dissenter. She’s frequently awkward, not especially amenable, surprising, resourceful, potent. My magic, magically wrested this colourful congregation from grief, and I don’t know how she did it.

Ali Noble, 2025

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Ali Noble: Artist Statement & Bio

For Ali Noble, textiles are soft contrarians in hard spaces. Textiles communicate adaptability and ‘soft power’ in typically hard-edged gallery environments. Textiles embody fluidity, versatility, and eroticism to skilfully subvert the implied power structures (architectural and ideological) of stability and permanence.

Noble is an Australian artist based on gadigal wangal land/ Sydney. Her extensive history of exhibiting in artist-run-initiatives, institutions and commercial spaces throughout Sydney and interstate, reflects a commitment to developing studio research through consistent solo and collaborative/curatorial projects.

Recent projects include Noble’s exhibition, Telepathic Lovesong (2021), at Galerie Pompom, featuring a 7-metre silver velveteen curtain that wrapped around the gallery wall. In 2021 Noble curated Supernatural Light Affinity at ANCA, Canberra. In 2022 Noble exhibited at Schmick Contemporary in Light Duet with Nadia Odlum, and at Prop gallery with Monica Rani Rudhar in Mediums. In 2023 Noble held her MFA exhibition titled Nothing is Certain, said The Curtain, at the University of Sydney.

As a recent MFA graduate, Sydney College of the Arts, Noble was awarded a Fauvette Loureiro Travel Scholarship, and the David Harold Tribe Postgraduate Research Fellowship (Sculpture). Noble recently presented a solo exhibition, Cubbyhouse (Nothing is Certain, Said The Curtain) at Firstdraft Gallery, which will be followed by a group exhibition ‘between buildings as between stars’ at the School House Gallery nipaluna/Hobart in October 2024.

Ali Noble’s practise incorporates installation, sculpture, collage and recently video, to communicate notions of enchantment and ‘soft-contrariness’. For Ali, textiles in particular, embody versatility, eroticism and poetry in spaces that are typically hard-edged and fixed. Ali’s work prioritises colour, sensuality and movement, fostering an environment of magic and possibility. Ali is an Australian based artist on gadigal wangal land/ Sydney with an extensive history of exhibiting in artist-run- initiatives, institutions and commercial spaces throughout Sydney and interstate.

Ali is a recent MFA graduate, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney where she was awarded a Fauvette Loureiro Travel Scholarship, and the David Harold Tribe Postgraduate Research Fellowship (Sculpture). In 2025 Ali presents her solo exhibition ‘Double Rainbow, a return to Magic’ at Stanley Street Gallery, and has been selected as a finalist for the Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) at Artspace, Sydney.

Artist portrait by Richard Healey-Finlay