Noémie Goudal’s work is inspired by removed and isolated places with distinct narrative influence. She constructs fictional photographic landscapes by amalgamating sections of exiting architectural constructions on large scale photographic backgrounds. The resulting works exist in a state between illusion and reality, with ambiguity to which state they truly belong.
Satellite I and Satellite II (both 2014) refer to Brutalist and Cosmic Indian architecture. They explore the artist's ongoing interest in geomorphic structures and the relationship between nature and artifice. Despite Goudal’s deliberate clues to the uncertainty of these imagined post-industrial architectural monuments, a sense of determined purpose, rigidity and stature is conveyed in each of the works.
Satellite II continues to build upon Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum’s contemporary photography collection and resonates with a core strand of their collections policy relating to camouflage (The Civil Defence Camouflage Directorate was based in Leamington Spa during WWII). This work fits with the theme in the way that it challenges ideas of concealment and deception through the constructions the artist creates in her landscape.
