Sue Webster's Artistic Rebirth: From YBA Power Couple to Solo Motherhood at 52
Sue Webster, once half of the formidable 1990s art power couple Noble & Webster, is experiencing a profound creative and personal renaissance. Her first institutional solo show, Birth of an Icon, marks a defiant departure from her collaborative past with Tim Noble, celebrating both her punk roots and her journey into motherhood at age 52.
The End of an Era: Unravelling After the Split
Webster and Noble met on their first day at Nottingham art school and became synonymous with the Young British Artists (YBA) movement that dominated London's art scene in the 1990s. Their shadow sculptures—meticulously crafted from junk that projected self-portrait silhouettes—caught the eye of collector Charles Saatchi, who famously purchased works like Toxic Schizophrenia with his taxi still running outside their Shoreditch studio.
However, their partnership, which spanned over three decades in both art and marriage, began to unravel. They stopped living together in 2012, divorced in 2018, and severed professional ties in 2020. Webster describes the separation as "almost like a death" and profoundly traumatic, having never lived alone before. She now refers to "Tim and Sue" in the third person, as if discussing a separate brand.
Crime Scene: A Confessional Exorcism
At the heart of her new exhibition is Crime Scene, a wall-filling piece that connects hundreds of artefacts from her life. This confessional work serves as an exorcism of her past, featuring references to Siouxsie and the Banshees, German culture from Adidas to darker historical elements, and personal tokens like an unopened 2016 packet of Walker's crisps celebrating Leicester City's Premier League victory.
Webster's teenage years included a six-month stay in a Leicester inpatient unit at age 13, which she credits with shaping her resilience. She writes of developing a "vigorous training routine" in adulthood, swimming each morning and boxing most nights to "exorcise the badness" that builds up internally.
Trauma, Loss, and Late Motherhood
A pivotal moment came in 2011 when Webster miscarried a baby with Noble during her 40s. She describes this as the turning point in their relationship, detailing the heartbreaking experience of being sent home to wait for the loss to complete naturally. "It was one of the worst things ever," she recalls. After this, Noble moved on to start a family with someone else.
Defiantly, Webster's new paintings feature larger-than-life self-portraits from her pregnancy with son Spider, born in 2020 when she was 52. Conceived via IVF after four attempts and further miscarriages, Spider represents what Webster calls reversing the "age-old cliche" about men having children later in life. She experienced no judgment about her age, only a sense that "this is what's meant to happen."
Rediscovering Artistic Independence
Since the split, Webster has doggedly refined her painting skills, transitioning from acrylics to oils with help from YouTube tutorials and advice from her local art materials shop. Her son Spider now visits the studio, offering critiques with his unique scoring system.
Webster acknowledges that an entire show's worth of unseen Noble & Webster work remains in storage, including what she believed would be "the best fucking show in the world" scheduled for Berlin in 2020. The pandemic intervened, but more significantly, Webster realized she could no longer collaborate with Noble.
"I've managed to separate myself from that work," she states. "Tim and I have both gone off in completely opposite directions... I've gone very introspective. I'm making the most personal work." Where collaborative efforts once made her personal creations feel unimportant, she now embraces this solo journey as authentic and timely.
Sue Webster: Birth of an Icon runs at Firstsite, Colchester from 31 January to 10 May, marking both an artistic rebirth and a personal triumph over trauma and tradition.
