2004/05

Reap, initiated by Anne Bean, with Mark Anderson, explored notions of capturing and marking time through the natural and complete cycle of a year. Inspired by over 40 years of working with time processes, Anne invited 18 artists to work on individual ways of  “capturing” the year through ideas of memory, process, metaphor and metamorphosis. Whilst each project evolved in vastly different ways throughout the year, they were all fully manifested in and around Southwark Park from 17 September 2005.

Reap involved 19 artists, 30 installations, 100’s of participants, 365 days and was shown in Cafe Gallery Projects, Coleman Project Space, Dilston Grove, The Scout House, Bermondsey and Southwark Park< The artists were Mark Anderson, Anne Bean, Lucy Cash, David Chapman, Marcus Coates, Rachel Cohen, Holly Darton, Gail Dickerson, Graham Fagen, Brian Gilson, Illur Malus Islandus, Meg Mosley, Miyako Narita, Lucille Power, Emily Richardson, Harald Smykla, Eden Solomon, Richard Wilson, z’ev. Throughout the year, Anne installed several works for Reap including 365 Dresses, Today's the Day, Yearnings, Deflowered, Sand Shifting, Visitations, Twelve Hundred Fathoms and Ashes and Remember Me. The images show four works by Anne Bean in Dilston Grove: Coils of incense for Buddhist temples, calculated to last altogether for one year of constant burning, were suspended in Dilston Grove, a former chapel as an installation Twelve Hundred Fathoms and Ashes. I looped turquoise threads through the coils. Finally, at the end of the year, all that remained was a floor piece of ashes and threads, the shape of which echoed the former installation. After engagement with Imperial College and Brogdale Apple Research Institute about modes of genetic modification, chemical preservation, waxing etc. I laid out 5000 apples on the floor, for one year, within which different levels of decay reveals the T.S. Eliot line “neither from nor towards, at the still point there the dance is,” in a work called   One copy of this photo was then placed outside for a year. Six months later the vase was photographed again. These images, Deflowered, looked at real/fake as well as photographic decay/actual decay, were placed next to each other

For Visitations, I placed heat-sensitive paper under card, one for each month. People visiting the exhibition placed a piece of burning incense on the card, in the appropriate month, so the heat transferred to the paper beneath and left a ‘drawing’ record. At the end, I revealed the 12 ‘drawings’ showing the burnt impressions on the card alongside the thermal ‘imprints,’ which disclosed different levels of attendance in various months.

Judith Palmer wrote of this work in the Reap catalogue:

For twelve months, Visitations, has been Dilston Grove’s meditative visitor’s book: inviting all who came, to lay a fragment of incense upon heat-sensitive paper. A diary of little silvery comet streaks records each fleeting human presence: a few faint flickers in December, a flurry of marks telling the story of crowded open-days on Ash Wednesday and May Day. As the months have passed, so the projects have proliferated, sending out sideshoots and freely self-seeding. Hundreds of people have unexpectedly found themselves a part of Reap’s year – joining in rituals, stepping through photographs…

On the final night the line “neither from nor towards, at the still point there the dance is,” was suspended in luminous letters and suspended on helium and released first in Dilston Grove and then into the sky

REAP on vimeo

http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue76/8274

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20121205050350/http://www.annebean.net/past-projects/2001-2010/187
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