ORDER OF OPERATIONS BY NOEL MIDDLETON AT NARWHAL Elena Iourtaeva

Order of Operations marks a first solo show at Narwhal for artist Noel Middleton, who has been exhibiting with that gallery for seven years. The works are, in a sense, site-­specific, for they incorporate Middleton’s

finds during a renovation of the gallery space. Inspired by the process of demolishing walls, peeling off

layers of old flooring and remaking the rooms, Middleton remodels his experience into a complex narrative,

complete with archetypal characters and enigmatic symbols, the significance of which he explained in a

public talk on January 24th.

Artist Noel Middleton with guests at the Artist Talk on January 24, 2015

Middleton’s art practice is heavily based on discarded items and objects closely at hand, which he “harvests”

daily, a process he jokingly characterizes as an “ongoing game.” The classicizing air of the show is inspired

by a chance encounter: Middleton found a discarded art book, “The Acropolis,” while renovating the gallery

building. He was particularly intrigued by the aesthetic of certain photographs showing antique sculptures in

museums or at archeological excavations.

Middleton is fascinated by the imperfections he uncovers through working closely with the various materials.

In the case of this show, he intimates that as he was wrecking the walls apart, he discovered an “elevated

sense of workmanship,” for each contractor applied a different touch in their past renovations, revealed in

the details. Connecting the antique aesthetic with these modern-­day excavations, Middleton made busts

representing various contractors’ trades and chose to imitate the display of antique statues in museums with

some additional sculptures.

Middleton confesses that he never knows what the final results will be like. Working from a rough sketch, he

explores the qualities of materials that he finds, allowing them to guide his work through “encouraging

compulsions.” Notably, he impresses found materials such as fruit cardboards or bubble wrap to shape the

wet plaster. The choice of impressions is guided by an intuition of what material would be fitting for each

statue. Certain materials leave traces of their coloring: the shaping process itself produces a subtle

reference to the archeological discovery of the original coloring of Green and Roman statues. Just as

Middleton discovered the history of the building through layer after layer of past renovations, the viewers are

encouraged to uncover layers of significance in his work and reflect on the gallery space.

Text and photo: Elena Iourtaeva

http://www.artoronto.ca/?p=26792

NOEL MIDDLETON AT NARWHAL CONTEMPORARY TERENCE DICK January 20, 2015 Back in his punk rock days playing with the Birthday Party, Nick Cave sang, “Junk sculpture turning back to junk” as a lament to and/or celebration of entropy. However, another way to think of it is as an earlier, and less refined, version of Martin Creed’s Work No. 232, the whole world + the work = the whole world, which is to say, art appears in the world just as it disappears from it, not by being created sui generis, but by being assembled from what’s already there. This recycling, whether in the form of junk sculpture, readymade, assemblage, or your standard painting/photo/bust, forgoes transcendence for a temporarily discrete immanence that, sooner or later, falls back into the indiscernible chaos and/or cosmos.

Noel Middleton, Trade II, 2014, steel, setting compounds

The upcycled remains of Narwhal Contemporary’s previous inhabitants serve as material and inspiration for Noel Middleton’s current occupation of that space. Plaster­cast debris, electrical piping, and assorted remnants from the demolition that carved out a white space to be filled with art have been completely blanched in knowing reference to the clichéd (and somewhat inaccurate) remains of classical civilization, but updated through a surreal aesthetic (triggered any time I see a disembodied nose) and the aforesaid junk sculptors who draw poetry out of the mundane and overlooked. There’s an added layer of logic here with a trio of busts representing the contractor’s holy trinity – plasterer, plumber, and electrician – ensconced amid piecemeal columns that might have been minimalist had they not been so abject. In our ruins, just as in our junk, we are witness to our discarded dreams and failed ideals. What remains is a wonderful, though unresolved, flux (see Middleton’s indiscriminate pile of casting fragments) and moments of beautiful serendipity (see the moulds of fruit­packing trays that absorb a tinge of purple fibre). Narhwal Contemporary: http://narwhalcontemporary.com/ Noel Middleton: Order of Operations continues until February 7.

http://www.akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=975

ART SPIN 2014 TERENCE DICK July 03, 2014 Wandering amongst the mostly young, mostly new to me folks at the opening to last weekend's annual Art Spin exhibition, I eventually ran into an old acquaintance from the times when we were young and mostly new. So I asked, "What's new?" And he astutely replied, "Everything is new and nothing is new." That was as good a review of the night as any.

Karen Abel, Geogarden (a subterranean symphony in C), 2013, salvaged violin and viola cases, alum crystals, cotton velvet The Art Spin folk have done an excellent job of once again finding an out­of­the­way, abandoned warehouse to temporarily occupy with an assortment of local art that runs the gamut from painting on polycarbonate to video projections to large scale installations. Last year it was a far more damaged space on Sterling Road; this year it is farther out in the Junction, but neat enough that it could be put to use as a hip furniture store (or a large gallery!) with only a bit of plaster. The entire exhibition (and associated promotional material and bike tour) was exceptionally well organized. This combination of guerilla tactics and professionalism had me pining for the old days of one­off exhibitions in unused buildings that are now too expensive even for commercial galleries at the same time I was admiring the ambition on view while also wondering what happened to the wildness and disorder of the rogue artistic spirit. I could have done with a little more of the latter and a little less of too familiar works that indicated a lack of knowledge about what came a couple generations before (though that makes me sound like even more of a grumpy old man). The strongest works in this type of show go big and grab your attention. It's the perfect opportunity to exercise the spectacular spirit in an artist's practice. Adam David Brown hit the nail on the head with his funhouse Op­Art video projection and Marian Wihak backed him up with an interactive platform with mirrored floors and gurgling water. Heather Nicol's twisting, twirling parachute and Ed Pien's rain of patterned ropes also played the

haptic card. And Noel Middleton's bizarre fountain seemed right at home amongst the bare brick walls and raw wires. When you only have a couple days to make your mark, you have to make the most of the opportunity. That's the only way to be remembered when today's new gets old.

Jennifer Rose Sciarrino, Patterned Recognition (Rubber), 2014, inkjet printed nylon, CNC plaster, table A room full of objects laid out on a grid of white tables inevitably leads one to think about morgues. Mike Kelley figured this out with his rag doll displays and Jennifer Rose Sciarrano does it with the added touch of funereal shrouds in her current exhibition at Daniel Faria Gallery. The twist is that her inert objects are in the process of becoming rather than having been. Held taunt beneath diaphanous fabric are a collection of obscured sculptures that push out against the fabric as if emerging from the depths. Since the tables are so low, you have to look down on them and then crouch to figure out the where the thing, the covering, and the table's surface contact and overlap. The hidden things are objects in transition, slowly being formed, but not quite there yet. At this stage they resemble fabrications of potentially modernist objects like balls, rods, and arcs. The shrouds are also imitations of actual substances – replicating the look of concrete, rubber, or steel, for example – which only add to a sense of simulation, of a world that is not quite real. Some of the patterns delve further than others into trompe l'oeil effects, but I prefer the ambiguous, blurry shapes under the equally indistinct patterns. Discerning their identities is like figuring out the function of a fossil. These future artifacts might not be much to look at, but they are plenty to ponder. http://www.akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=885

THE FOURTH ANNUAL ART SPIN EXHIBITION TERENCE DICK September 03, 2013 If you ever want to get on my good side, it never hurts to put your art in a space that isn't white or cubic. I've seen exhibitions in a church, a school, an abandoned architecture office, a house, a satchel, a bunch of wading pools, and random places throughout the city including some memorable parking garages. While the standard gallery provides a neutral space for artists to do their thing, the outside world brings art and life together in a way that – when it works – is mutually beneficial. If I had the time, I might even argue that art woven into the fabric of everyday spaces is the best way to experience it. Suffice to say: when you send me the exhibition invite to your alternative space, you'll have me at "site­specific."

Noel Middleton, Sterling Caer Observer, 2013, mixed media

Art Spin is a Toronto­based organization that brings together bike tours with gallery crawls. They also curate their own pop­up annual exhibition; the most recent one took place this past weekend in a heritage­protected, but long dormant building (that also appeared in a Drake video) on the creative hub that is Sterling Road. It's just the type of place you expect to see an exhibition of edgy young artists carving out a space for themselves in the city: industrial, cavernous, raw, dusty, dim, somewhat dangerous. Given the unique environment, the participants who most succeeded in bring their game were those who built on what they found. I'm not sure what is accomplished by hanging a painting on a wall here; it seems no different that

it would in a gallery. Making use of the space, as Lois Schklar did with her wire sculpture, is really what made this a memorable experience. Noel Middleton did it with a shrine to some abject geometric deity that looked like it might have been found here by the curators. And Marcus Heckmann's laser art interacted with the architecture to turn a dead elevator shaft into the frame for his light show.

Michael Toke, WE ARE HAPPY, 2013, video sculpture

Michael Toke used alcoves to design his interactive video sculpture, but you needed at least two people to get the full effect and I travel solo. Alas. There was also the powerful Ghost Barn by John Haney and Carey Jernigan (when in doubt, go big), but the exhibition ended two days after it began, so you'll just have to use your imagination (and Google image search). That's the downside to these guerilla exhibitions: they tend to be short lived. Then again, that's also what makes them special. http://www.akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=756

Lohner:Carlson Erik ThomsenHenning Lohner and Van Carlson areartists with extensive backgrounds infilmmaking, musical composition, andcinematography. (Carlson has worked

with David Lynch and Steven Spielberg,among others.) Both are devotees ofJohn Cage, and their work grows out of adesire to give visual form to Cage’s “Si-lences.” From about 1,000 hours of videofootage collected over 20 years, theyhave extracted what they call “Active Im-ages,” moving pictures devoid of narra-tive, dialogue, or music. This is not too different from standard

video practices, but in the end, the pairwas able to produce extremely meditativescenes, often using the blandest subjectmatter, such as a flock of geese or sheepaimlessly milling about in high-definitionand high-key color. The screen sizes atErik Thomsen, which usually shows Asianart, ranged from 20 inches to 60 inches,and in the larger images, like BrightClouds and Ripples and Sparkles (both2008), there is the sense of a landscapebrought to life, as the motions of sky andwater are captured in tiny increments.Manhattan Yellow Sky with Steam (1990)is a mesmerizing urban-scape, with yel-lowed wisps of vapor dancing amongtowering smokestacks. The moodiest ofthe lot was Osaka Hotel Room (1991), inwhich a square picture window, next to a

for the show, amounting to a provocativemix of painting, collage, photography,sculpture, video, a performance artifact,and a room-size installation. On the gallery floor was Noel Middle-

ton’s enormous wood necklace, EclipticObserver (2012), carved to resemble gemsand spiked with its own kind of sundial,while nearby was Rina Banerjee’s sculp-ture She drew a premature prick, in a flus-ter of transgressions, abject by birth sheknew not what else to do … (2011). Thesculpture was made from a found Indiandress form that Banerjee had covered witha vintage sari shimmering with silverthread. The figure lay on a bed of emptybrown medicine bottles surrounded byvertical resin replicas of American buffalohorns. A 64-by-70-inch oil on canvas byJean-Pierre Roy, Weltanschauung (2012),depicted a flawlessly rendered, ominousfantasy of a machinelike vortex sucking aclockwise cloud of urban buildings, trees,and earth into its near-futuristic void. The installation of a silver Mylar safety-

blanket–covered room and creaky medita-tion cots by Myla Dalbesio dominated thesmaller rear gallery and brought to mind asurvivalist’s shelter. Dalbesio’s AscensionRoom (2012) contained three out-of-synch subtitled video screens featuring aman’s head reciting and indoctrinating allwho entered into a cultlike “family.” Alongwith her smaller sculptures made from pillcapsules and salt blocks on a mirroredtable, the effect was highly sinister. Worlds both real and imagined were

created and destroyed in a trio of ab-stract, cut-canvas, ink-and-paint col-lages by Emily Stoddart, along withthree awe-inspiring graphite domestic-disaster drawings by Dane Patterson.The apocalypse, in whatever form, hasseldom seemed as mystical and down-right handsome. —Doug McClemont

ARTnews March 2013 95

glowing lamp, acted as a kind of screenwithin the screen, the sky over the citygradually darkening and coming to puls-ing, nocturnal life.If you’ve ever wished for a movie to

stand still so that you might enjoy a pro-longed sequence of pure visual pleasure,

these images speak to those spaces thatget swallowed up or lost in the interestof a different kind of storytelling.

—Ann Landi

‘13.0.0.0.0’RHA celebration based on the notion of theapocalypse, this exhibition drew its titlefrom the elaborate Mayan calendar andthe supposed end-of-the-world date ofDecember 12, 2012. Twenty artists par-ticipated, most contributing new works

reviews: new york

Henning Lohner, Osaka Hotel Room, 1991, moving picture, digital image on 20" flat screen. Erik Thomsen.

Rina Banerjee, She drew a premature prick, in a fluster of transgressions, abject by birth she knew not what else to do . . . , 2011, mixed media, 40" x 90" x 32". RH.

RN New York Reviews Mar 2013_Layout 1 2/4/13 3:16 PM Page 5

© 2013 ARTnews L.L.C. All rights reserved. Not for reprint. www.artnews.com

MARK MURPHY DESIGN

NOEL MIDDLETON’S ARTFUL ADVOCATE November 16, 2012

Multi­displinary artist, Noel Middleton creates enchanted installations comprised of found materials in nature. Fantastical themes unite tender beasts and other­worldly nymphs who occupy meditative dream­states.

Noel Middleton’s sculpture, Artful Advocate, was recently added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Narrative Artand I could not be happier. Noel’s work is an exceptional compliment to the Outsider Art, Henry Darger, and other Outsider­inspired works by the Rob and Christian Clayton, Trenton Doyle Hancock and Esther Pearl Watson.

Recently, I caught up with Noel Middleton to discuss more about his work. “Regarding the Artful Advocate and Squander Column Group series ­ materially, the intent was to further pursue the use of found materials, and source the most commonly used and discarded items available. Construction and renovation sites, along with rummaging though alleys, offered limitless materials. (Above, Anxiety, detail).

Even beyond the endless wood cut­offs, the availability of re­usable quality stock was both intriguing and confounding. Over time I had amassed so much material that even before I began to devise the series of masks, I still had ample stock to line my studio walls with shelving, and even found myself cooking over a fire with the cleaner material. ...And that’s how the process begins ­ the harvesting of enough material to the point where you can begin drawing connections, patterns, and personalities. (Above, Victor Face, Saleman Anxiety).

My work with masks and headpieces has always been rooted in the sense of disconnectedness an introspection they afford when worn, and with the Squander Column Group the intent was to consider themes revolving around perceived need and usefulness related to the very materials and the context from which they were lifted ­ to give a face and expression to the varying views and sentiments around material worth versus the worth of effort and time. The Artful Advocate was constructed primarily from untreated pine 2x4 ­ the most commonly used, and taken for granted, material employed in construction. Highly pragmatic,

yet an apologist to the notion of efficiencies trumping thoughtful conservation ­ The Artful Advocate is the brother of The Guile Underseer.” (Above, Guilelesss Advocate, Striated Recital).

Artful Advocate is carved out of wood, 28 inches tall and features teeth that will make you smile. http://murphydesign1.blogspot.ca/2012/11/noel­middletons­artful­advocate.html

Masks by Noel MiddletonCourtesy of Narwhal Art Projects

ART REVIEWS REVIVING CRAFTY GRANNY ILAVSKA SHOW COMMENTS ON MODERNITY AND AGE­OLD SENSIBILITIES

BJARKE MADSEN March 27, 2007

When Ilavska sneak­premiered at the alternative design smorgasbord Come Up To My Room at the Gladstone Hotel February 23 to 25, it had the all­encompassing feeling of your grandma’s living room. Handkerchiefs, embroidered pillows and a stand­in grandma in a rocking chair. It was all there. At Magic Pony, where the show’s continuing, Ilavska’s nostalgic qualities are less evident. Instead, the politics of the show have surfaced. Contemporary artists dive into the tradition of grandma’s crafts, celebrating cross­stitching, sewing machines and hand­knitting. Alongside these tongue­in­cheek tributes, the show launches a paradoxical social commentary on how we lack appreciation for things truly memorable. Most of us live in a sleek culture of manufacturing, all of our personal possessions conveniently disposable. Noel Middleton takes a stab at this idea with his hobbit­size grandma figure, Babka, shaped by salvaged wool artefacts. At first glance the figure’s fairy­tale posture is menacing, but eventually grandma coziness eclipses fear.

Fashion designer and artist Lydia Klenck’s 3­D Sacred Heart argues the textile crafts’ ability to challenge technology as a strategy for the arts. An intricately sewn heart is the centre of a flutter of textile techniques. An unexpected comic moment occurs in Stephen Appleby­Barr’s painting First All­Witch Acadian Hockey Team – 1933. It’s a mock antique team painting representing the fearlessness of the Aca­ dian witch players. Ilavska isn’t daring. Its strength is its appreciation of the modern artist in conjunction with older sensibilities, a quiet reflection on the parameters of art and design.