1970 onwards


I have performed with the Kipper Kids (Brian Routh and Martin von Haselberg) in galleries, theatres and clubs in the UK, Europe and the States since 1970 and, most recently, in Wakey Wakey at Matts Gallery in 2005. 

“Bean performed songs representing a considerable range… through the intensity and often grotesque rendering, the songs were pushed into the same world of comedy-nightmare which the Kipper Kids themselves so comfortably inhabit. The songs were punctuated and accompanied by the deadpan capers of the Kipper Kids.

Initially one is tempted to read her performance as parody – parody of the rock genre, of the romanticization of love or of the stereotyping of male and female roles in popular music. But parody is at once gentler and less ambitious than in this piece – it is content to mock what it apes. In this performance the music became a vehicle to create something which it surely suggested, but never became; it was grabbed by the throat, twisted and strangled into an intensity it never sought to achieve in its previous life, and was placed, a package of very raw energy, in the context of a brute absurdity which counterpointed and mocked its passion.



What we end up with is a rude and joyful reminder of the sheerly exhilarating experience of dwelling in our curious, physical bodies in the puzzling and contradictory realities which constitute our ‘world’.”
Artweek, Los Angeles on a performance at Vanguard Gallery.

For a number of performances this winter the Kippers were joined by artist-singer Anne Bean. She proved no second to the Kippers in gutsy self injuries breaking lit neon tubes with her bare hands….”
LA Weekly 1977


”Something is not avant-garde unless it is provocative and a challenge. This is certainly what the general public in America believe. The last performance to confirm this golden rule was that of Anne Bean and the Kipper Kids. Bodies painted in the most obscene fashion: vulgarity in every form, savage cries, nauseous smells: songs taken to the level of paroxysm, and guttural sounds were the clue to this show, which broke every record at the box office and has achieved a large following.”

The Avant Garde Savaged by Anne Bean, translated article from Playmen, May 1979