Based on two drawings they made early in their career in 1996, Noble & Webster re-work their impoverished doodles in grand-scale neon. Bad-kids-done-good, paying homage to the high art conceptualism of Bruce Nauman, in a media best associated with liquor stores.
Toxic Schizophrenia is a classic badass tattoo, constructed from 516 little light bulbs. Blaring violently bright and self-indulgent, Tim Noble and Sue Webster take pop art to the extreme, blowing it up in lights like fly-by-night casino chintz. The artist design and make these light paintings themselves, creating a DIY glam that's better than the real thing.
Tim Noble and Sue Webster have developed their own cult of personality as the enfants terrible of contemporary art. Keeping it real with their affinity to working class culture, their self-portraits have been made from garbage, dead animals, and in the form of Neanderthals.
Their work also includes large electric light drawings of tattoo iconography and bling logos. In Girlfriend From Hell and Puny Undernourished Kid, Noble & Webster combine these aspects of their practice making a further self-referential chapter in their rebel epic.