Location: River Wear wall, viewed from Framwelgate Waterside
“I want this work to capture the nuances of the word ‘reflect,’ so that the act of one’s own contemplation is as intrinsic to the work as its manifestation.” – Anne Bean
Anne Bean is an active and legendary figure in live art and performance in the UK. A multi-faceted artist, she has resisted a conventional art-world career and followed her own personal trajectory of enquiry: ‘What is art and what am I doing in it?’ Reflect is a quiet and poignant illustration of her life-long personal engagement with art.
About Anne Bean
Anne Bean first attracted public attention in the character of a rock star – ‘Anne Archy’ – with music and performance group The Moodies in the early 1970s. This art student collective subverted norms of gender and sexuality and was inadvertently so successful that punk impresario Malcolm McLaren wanted to manage them. It was the start of Bean’s collaborative engagements with other artists, who included pyrotechnic sculptor, Stephen Cripps, and the anarchic Kipper Kids. In 1983, with percussionist and performance artist Paul Burwell and sculptor Richard Wilson, Bean co-founded the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, creating unorthodox visual and sonic experiences and site-specific art installation events.
Bean’s wide-ranging practice encompasses performance, photography, slide projections, drawing, painting, ceramics, video and sound. Her ‘materials’ have included fire and pyrotechnics, steam and water, even blood, as well as the more conventional paper, paint or ink.
Image credit: Reflect, Anne Bean. Image courtesy of the artist