Dr Joseph Noonan-Ganley

Staff details

Position Lecturer in Fine Art
Department Art
Email j.noonan-ganley (@gold.ac.uk)
Dr Joseph Noonan-Ganley

Joseph's art explores how identity is collaboratively made in the process of interpreting others, being interpreted by others and the integration of these relationships.

Aiming to expand queer sensory vocabularies by complexifying male sexuality it exposes problems that are cleansed out of contemporary queer culture (e.g. political ambivalence). The works draw from the literary genre of bio-fiction, feminist bodily experience, theories of sexual dissidence and materialist filmmaking.

Joseph often takes as artistic material the lives and works of bisexual and homosexual men (Charles James, Gareth Thomas). He openly manipulates the remnants of these artists, designers, sports people, dressmakers and writers. Unearthed materials are remade through filming, sculptural construction and textual experimentation in explicit detail. Examples include: letters riddled with arguments and an amateur mini-TV series shot on a grandmother’s camcorder.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD Fine Art, Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, 2017
  • Masters Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2013
  • BA Fine Art Painting, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, 2009

Teaching and Supervision

Joseph has taught art across BA, MA & PhD level internationally for over a decade. He has taught in the art department at Goldsmiths since 2012 and is currently a lecturer on the Graduate Diploma in Art.

His supervision interests are in the areas of moving image, sculpture, performance, queer art, text/writing art, sexual dissidence, materialism, experimental biography and identity exploration.

Research interests

Joseph's recent work The Cesspool of Rapture, 2017, consists moving-image studies of zippers, stains, rips, abrasions, openings, and closings in a series of dresses made by the American couturier Charles James (1906-1978). These videos register and move through James’ garments, his pornographic drawings and graphic illustrations of fastening devices at alternating speeds. This is registered in sound by an encyclopaedic catalogue of sonic gestures derived from the zipper and synced to each individual frame. It is at times violent and at other times tentative and gentle as the uncovering of the damage to the dresses unfolds. Chopped up audio recordings of James explicating his interests in homoeroticism and sexuality persistently interject the footage. The explicit language of his conversation and his drawings animate the experiences of the people that once wore the garments.

This work includes the installation of a series of reconstructions of James’s 1932 Taxidress. Its black linen body is reconfigured and abstracted as the splayed design makes unfinished seams and unzipped zippers visible.

Joseph is part of the ongoing exhibition series Something To Be Scared Of with recent shows at no.w.here, London, Syndicate gallery, Cologne, and A.M. London.

Publications and research outputs

Art Object

Carter, Claire Makhlouf; Noonan-Ganley, Joseph and Wakeford, Nina. 2022. DEMO PHOENIX.

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2022. Our Bed.

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2017. The Cesspool of Rapture.

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2016. Femme Fabrications.

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2015. The Secret Language of Elizabeth Tolbert.

Article

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2021. Bed Text. Mirror Lamp Press(4), pp. 42-52.

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2021. Our Prop Mud. NERO Magazine,

Artist's Book

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2019. The Cesspool of Rapture.

Book Section

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2021. I Gave Them To All The Guys In The Room. In: Maria Fusco and Lizzie Homersham, eds. The Happy Hypocrite – Without Reduction. London: Book Works. ISBN 9781912570102

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2020. Deflexion. In: Richard Porter, ed. A Queer Anthology of Wilderness. London: Pilot Press.

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph. 2019. My Library. In: Chris Dreier; Gary Farrelly and Carl Haase, eds. ECII - The European Conference of Institutional Ideators. Berlin: Fantôme. ISBN 9783940999467

Edited Book

Noonan-Ganley, Joseph, ed. 2012. Idioglossia: an art writing glossary. London: Art Writing Guild. ISBN 9780957029439

Further profile content

Teaching overview

Joseph established and ran the Fine Art PhD research programme at Newcastle University (2019-2022) and the Language and Performance course on the Studio for Immediate Spaces MA at the Sandberg Instituut, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2015-2019). As well as his role on the Graduate Diploma in Art at Goldsmiths he is a Senior Tutor on the MFA at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University.

Selected teaching experience:
• Newcastle University (2018-2022) – PhD Fine Art & BA Fine Art
• Goldsmiths, University of London (2019-2021) – PhD Fine Art & BA Fine Art
• Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford (2014 - current) - MFA & BA Fine Art
• University of Reading (2021) – PhD Fine Art
• Goldsmiths, University of London (2017-2021) – BA Fine Art & History of Art
• London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (2020-2021) - Art Direction BA
• The School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University (2018-2021) - BA Fine Art
• University of Huddersfield (2018-2021) – External examiner, Fine Art MA by research
• Goldsmiths, University of London (2019-2020) – MA Artists’ Film and Moving Image
• Sandberg Instituut, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2015-2019) – Language and Performance; Studio for Immediate Spaces MA
• Bath Spa University (2018-2019) – BA Fine Art
• Liverpool John Moores University (2018) – BA Fine Art
• Royal College of Art, London (2017-2018) - Critical Practice MA
• Sandberg Instituut, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2015) - External examiner, Critical Studies MA
• Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts (2013) – Staff research symposia
• National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2010-2011) – BA Fine Art Sculpture