Walking into the Numinous installation is entering an extension of the artist herself; the vibrant energy, the glow, the rapid-fire quips, the passages of quiet introspection, the challenges, the questions.

Introducing the exhibition is an illuminated neon version of the artist’s initials modeled after delta Δ the triangular fourth letter of the Greek alphabet and a signifier of principles as diverse as difference in mathematics, uncertainty in physics and a missing gene in genetics.

Soft rose pink, the signature colour that imbues and bathes Noula Diamantopoulos’s Quest performances suffuses the rose, blue, violet and white sculpted neon texts. A field of luminous radiation, an aura of rose pink suggestive of the paranormal or divine presence resonates from the light messages that transmit and transform ideas and perceptions.

With words as both medium and meaning expressed in a language of light, Noula Diamantopoulos, like some latter day mythic Delphic oracle from her Greek heritage, seeks to connect through posing conundrums. Questions are a format that is integral to her holistic life-practice that integrates visual arts in a range of media, published writing, and counseling and at the heart of the cryptic written-questions-only dialogues of her Quest performances; meditative exchanges, where the ‘noise’ of talking is eliminated. In suppressing the voice, a way can be opened to find it. Enabling a path to be set towards self-awareness and to uncovering what we really understand of the words we use.

Signs are authoritative. They advertise. They name, direct, sell, lure. Neon is the glow and pulse of Vegas, the vibe of an Asian alley.

Noula’s cryptic neon signs are quiet, introspective, oblique: articulating the existential, interrogating relationships, the agony of indecision, inviting interpretation and internal conversation, seeking enlightenment: ‘how are you, you?’, ‘# oneness – It’s plural’, and the elliptical ‘what happens if you don’t?’.

Works of art are reflective of an artist’s Intentions, vision and experiences. They are a form of storytelling for their time. Since its development in the early twentieth-century neon tubing has been taken up by many artists from Dan Flavin through Jenny Holzer and Tracy Emin for its form and light and messaging. Diamantopoulos’s response is to adapt SMS, the dominant net-age vernacular, yet imbue it with a mystique, a psychology and concepts of and beyond the everyday.

Barbara Dowse
Curator