Paul Noble

Paul Noble was born in 1963 in Northumberland, England. He studied at Sunderland Polytechnic from 1982 to 1983 and completed a Fine Art degree at Humberside College of Higher Education in 1986. He later moved to London and, between 1988 and 1998, was a founding member of City Racing, an artist-run exhibition space in south London.

From 1996 to 2011 Noble developed his best known work, Nobson Newtown, a long-running series of extremely large and meticulously worked graphite drawings, maps, and related sculpture and installation that construct a fictional, dystopian English town named for its creator. The project was shown in stages at institutions including the Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2005) and, in a comprehensive presentation, at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2014). His 2011 solo exhibition Welcome to Nobson at Gagosian's London gallery led to his shortlisting for the 2012 Turner Prize. He continues to live and work in London.

Critical attention to Noble has centered on the ambition and obsessive craft of Nobson Newtown, the invented city he drew, named, and mapped over roughly fifteen years using graphite on paper alongside related sculpture and installation. His 2012 Turner Prize shortlisting, tied to the Welcome to Nobson exhibition at Gagosian's London gallery in 2011, marked the high point of mainstream recognition, following more than a decade of exhibitions with contemporary art institutions including the Migros Museum in Zurich and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which presented the completed Nobson cycle in 2014. No verbatim critical assessment from a named critic at a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is quoted here.

No confirmed, well documented all-time auction record could be verified for Paul Noble from the sources available for this profile. His market activity appears to run primarily through gallery sales, principally at Gagosian, and through limited print editions handled by publishers including Cristea Roberts Gallery. Collectors should treat any auction price attributed to Noble with caution until it can be confirmed against a primary auction house record.

No catalogue raisonne for Paul Noble has been identified, and verification of works currently depends on gallery records rather than a published scholarly catalogue. His market operates predominantly through primary gallery representation at Gagosian and through limited print editions, which means public price transparency is more limited than for artists with an established secondary market. Collectors should also independently confirm any auction claims made about this artist, since this profile could not verify a documented all-time auction record from primary sources.