Artists doing amazing things with Haru – Julia Noble

Written by Sandy, April 2021

Our programme of asking artists to work with Haru stuck-on design has produced a wonderful array of different projects. For each artist, their first project with us is always doing a scheme here in the showroom, next to the canal in Westbourne Park. It’s a white canvas, a white box of a space, where they can use the walls, the ceiling, the desk tops, the floor even. And it can look very dramatic. We first came across Julia Noble’s work walking down Portobello Road one day, when she had an exhibition in one of the galleries there. She was sitting at a table, surrounded by her work, sewing coloured pieces of textile together – which is how she makes her large, hugely joyful works of art. Maybe, we thought, that’s something that might work with tape. It could look fantastic. Let’s ask her. A couple of months later the results were up on our walls, and we were smiling at just how powerful it was. How full of colour. But what did Julia make of it all – how easy was it to translate her ideas to another medium? What did she think of working with tape? ‘If anything my problem was trying to limit the number of tapes I would use - Haru has such gorgeous bright colours to choose from. I also like that with the thinner tapes you can get additional colours by the layering process. And it’s great there are different textures of tape with different opacity – so I could completely cover some areas, but with others allow the bottom layers to show through. And there are different surfaces – the matt thinner tape contrasted with the shiny florescent tapes, providing lots of opportunities to create work of texture and depth.’     Was it easy to work with the tape straight away. Did you take to it like a duck to water? ‘The tape was really easy to use. I had an exhibition planned last year that sadly got cancelled. The works I had created were inspired by the rainforests of central and South America and I did think of doing an installation wall with Haru tape as part of that exhibition.’ ‘It was great to practise a bit first so that I could get to grips with the way the tape worked. It was really lovely layering it, but I did also enjoy the fact that if you placed a bit of tape somewhere and then decided its placement wasn’t right it was so easy just to remove it.’ Do you think it changed the way you worked? Did it open you up in new ways perhaps? ‘Yes, using the tape certainly challenged me to think about how to create something in a different way. It made me think about the things that are important to me in my work, and how technically I could achieve this with the tape. My work is always about layering and colour, and I really do enjoy a challenge.’ ‘My work is often intuitive - I have an idea but I don’t know how the work is going to turn out until it is finished. For the installation at the showroom I had to do some measuring and possibly more planning than I normally do. I practised a piece at home and then I planned the colour palette for the first 2 pieces. For the 3rd one I always intended to create it after seeing how the first 2 worked out, and to do something that drew on them. In the end the 3rd piece was my favourite - it felt really free to create.’ ‘Overall it was a great project, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the challenge of translating my artwork into an installation with Haru – which really is a wonderful medium.’ Just looking at what Julia produced you can see that enjoyment beam out. It was a splendid showcase for the layering and bright palette of Haru.   noblejulia.com

Instagram: @jujunoble