Sue Webster readies solo show after split, painting motherhood at 52

Sue Webster is preparing her first institutional solo show, centred on a wall-filling confessional work called Crime Scene and a series of large paintings of herself pregnant with her son Spider, whom she had at 52. Webster came to prominence as part of the YBAs with Tim Noble after arriving in London in 1992.

Five years later Charles Saatchi bought their light sculpture Toxic Schizophrenia and a shadow piece titled Miss Understood and Mr Meanor from their Shoreditch live‑work space. The pair stopped living together in 2012, divorced in 2018 and ended their professional partnership in 2020; Webster now refers to “Tim and Sue” in the third person, saying she feels dissociated from that body of work.

Crime Scene assembles hundreds of personal artefacts — from a paperback of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to a 2016 packet of Leicester City celebratory crisps — and Webster describes the piece partly as an exorcism after a long shared life with Noble. She has mapped her past in handwritten mind maps, traces a childhood inpatient stay, and says she maintains a vigorous routine of swimming and boxing “in order to exorcise the badness” that builds up inside her.

The wall also carries a hospital letter from 2011 after Webster miscarried with Noble; she calls that moment a turning point in their relationship. She later had Spider in 2020 via IVF, after four attempts and further miscarriages, and says the child is now healthy.

Key Topics

Culture, Sue Webster, Tim Noble, Young British Artists, Charles Saatchi, Crime Scene