Archivio Conz

Ann Noël (b. 1944 in Plymouth, UK, lives and works in Berlin) is a British artist who has experimented with a wide array of mediums, from performance and installation to painting, typography, and graphic design. Noël studied at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, working alongside Ian Hamilton Finlay and John Furnival. In 1969, Noël moved to New York to work as an assistant to Dick Higgins at Something Else Press, the seminal publishing house responsible for disseminating Intermedia texts and artworks by numerous Fluxus artists. She married Emmett Williams, who worked there as editor-in-chief, in 1970. Noël’s diaries, which she began writing in 1968, feature an intimate account of meetings, events, and projects undertaken alongside many of the prominent artists of Fluxus. Her diary, Noël Berlin Verona Conz, published by Archivio Conz in 2009, is a lively recollection of the adventures experienced together with her husband and Francesco Conz. In the 1980s, Noël relocated to Berlin, refining her artistic practice to the production of mail art, editions, and publications. Her book You, published in 1982 as part of the DAAD program, features more than 400 graphic variations on the letter “I.” In 1984, she presented Spirale, an artist’s book and a performance with Williams at the Sprachen der Künste (Languages of the Arts) festival at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Each letter of the alphabet represents names of artists, streets and restaurants in Berlin, and fragments of songs, recited in a repartee between Noël and Williams. Noël’s work has been exhibited internationally and includes recent projects at the biennales in Venice, Liverpool, and Łódź, Poland. In 2013, Noël was awarded the first museum FLUXUS+ medal.