Ali Noble

The Shela na gig displays her exaggerated vulva to ward off death and evil. She is a remnant of a pre-Christian mother-goddess religion where her power was absolute. She was revered.

Continuing their collaborative trip as The Golden Flowerpot, Cybele Cox and Ali Noble burst open the female experience in all its elaborate glory with their new installation, The Golden Flower Pot: a psychedelic temple. Seeking altered states and consciousness transformation, the artists envision a alchemic reawakening which harks back to the psychedelic movement of the late 1960s.

But where the first movement was all abandon and loose, the new psychedelia gives voice to the current zeitgeist of a world in flux. One where the esthetics of feminism have found a strong resonance with contemporary art: resist convention, refute economic rationalism, look within. Idealism, intuition, dreamstates.

Noble’s all seeing eye of providence is compelling as it stares you down in Flag for Another Dimension II. A mind expanding wall hanging whose bright yellows, blues and gold transmit energy. Her sculpture and self-portrait, Motherlove seeks to unleash the complex contradictions of motherhood. Tenderness, passion, ambivalence, and fear are expressed in hyper real hues.

Cox forages ancient symbolism where women were the top dog of deities. In her work Baubo, Sacred Fool, a woman stands atop patriarchal histories. Male faces, heads twisted and stacked. From a height the woman leans over gazing at a female creature squatted and pissing on the floor. Claw like feet. Half animal, half human. She is glorious.

Invited into the collaboration is sound artist, Adam Cox, whose pallet of sounds pulse with women’s voices flitting from the high pitched and flirtatious, to long husky whispers. The psychoacoustic experience offers up the modern female stereotype as a sacrifice - fitting for a temple filled with our new deities.

Nina Stromqvist 2016