Noel Harding
| Noel R. Harding | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 21, 1945 London, England |
| Died | May 26, 2016 (aged 70) Toronto |
| Known for | video art installation art public sculpture |
Noel R. Harding (December 21, 1945 – May 26, 2016) was a Canadian contemporary artist. He produced sculptures, installations, video works, and public artworks during an artistic career that spanned over forty years.
Noel Robert Harding was born December 21, 1945 in London England.
Harding taught in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Guelph between 1972 and 1979, and in the Department of Experimental Art at the Ontario College of Art between 1977 and 1982. From 1984 to 1995, he taught at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunst (AKI) in Enschede, The Netherlands and at the Dutch Art Institute (ArtEZ) in Enschede, in the International Post Graduate Program.
He died in Caledon, Ontario on May 26, 2016 from sudden heart failure.
Harding initially became known as an artist through his video works in the early 1970s. Some of his video works include
During the period that he was producing video art, Harding was a part of the Centre for Experimental Art and Communication that existed in Toronto between 1975 and 1978. In 1976, Harding was a founding member of the artist run video access centre Ed Video in Guelph Ontario.
In the 1980s, Harding built several installations around the theme of agriculture and the environment. In 1980 he was commissioned by the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England to produce the work Scenic Events on A Path of Upheaval. In Scenic Events, a small cart carrying live heads of lettuce traverses the gallery while goldfish swim in a wraparound tank along the gallery walls, and an overhead speaker relays the sound of bombs. Harding is reported to have made the work as a response to the Soviet–Afghan War that began in late 1979. In his 1981 piece Enclosure for a Conventional Habitat, he created a work that placed six live chickens on a conveyor belt with an automatic feeding mechanism. The piece brought the sight, sound and smell of food production into the art gallery environment.
From the 1990s until his death, Harding produced primarily public artworks. In 1990 he completed and installed "The Potato Eaters" at the Mississauga Civic Centre. This was followed by The Elevated Wetlands in 1997 and 1998. Installed in Taylor Creek park, Toronto, the piece consists of a set of elevated gardens supported on sculptures made of recycled polystyrene and acrylic. The sculptures act as a water filtration system, using solar panels to pump water from the adjacent Don River into the sculpture's elevated wetlands, where the water is purified organically. Elevated Wetlands is his most well known work.
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