Nadine Christensen, Petalia Mackay, Sandra Selig, Andrea Tu, Curator: Max Delany
In cartoons when characters have a problem they tend to pace, mapping out a small space with their purposeful but repetitive steps, scratching chin or head, brow furrowed in a few simple lines, until finally everything is released with the sudden introduction of a light bulb. It is usually a primitive kind of light bulb, not much more than a couple of smooth lines to suggest the rounded glass, a curling filament, and basic bayonet or screw fitting. And at that moment when the light goes on, light itself is represented in a jagged flare of fluorescent yellow.
Of course what scenes like this are trying to represent visually is the idea of inspiration, the moment when a solution springs into our head-perhaps the idea of the idea itself. In cartoons ideas click straight in, as suddenly as turning on a switch, and then we cut to our character busily putting idea into practice. But it does not always happen like this in real life, or in the art gallery. In fact, sometimes all we seem to get, perhaps all we are meant to get, is the pacing and brow furrowing, the character's repeated encounter with space, colour, objects-a kind of loop of unresolved thinking. Perhaps there is something a little cartoon like about No Noise. It is an exhibition that manages to pull together works that seem a little too lurid in colour, slightly madcap, a bit jokey- there is even the light bulb. Think of these works in cartoon form, and it is easy to see how they could fall over the edge into a crazy and uncertain animation, the mad action that follows the click of the