Archivio Conz

Ann Noël 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. After graduating in 1968, she moved to Stuttgart to work with Editions Hansjörg Mayer. The international publishing house, a groundbreaker in experimental printmaking, was the promoter of numerous seminal publications by artists such as Richard Hamilton, Dorothy Iannone, Dieter Roth, and André Thomkins. In 1969, Noël moved to New York to work as an assistant to Dick Higgins at Something Else Press, the enlightened publishing house responsible for disseminating Intermedia texts and artworks by numerous Fluxus artists. Emmett Williams, who was working there as editor-in-chief at the time, would become her husband in 1970. Noel’s artistic activity has often been associated with Fluxus, so much so that she received the designation of “Mrs. Fluxus.” Her diaries, which she began writing in 1968, feature an intimate account of meetings, events, and projects undertaken alongside many of the prominent artists of this movement. A special diary is Noël Berlin Verona Conz, published by Archivio Conz in 2009—a lively recollection of the adventures experienced together with her husband and Francesco Conz. During the 1970s, Noël worked as a supervisor at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, as a printmaking instructor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, and as a visiting artist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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 Noel and Williams. Noël’s work has been exhibited internationally and includes recent projects at the biennales in Venice, Liverpool, and Łódź, Poland.