Matt’s Gallery, London
Firstsite, Colchester
Colchester Art Centre
Hull Art Lab

Autobituary was Anne Bean’s second exhibition for Matt’s Gallery and turned to the artist’s early performance work, displaying on 30 video monitors the recent re-formations of original performances made by the artist from 1969-1974.

Autobituary is a dynamic sculptural installation commissioned by Matt’s Gallery, London and toured to firstsite & Colchester Arts Centre and Hull Art Lab.

Revealing a practice that spans performance, sculpture, drawing, text and sound, the re-formed performances -Shadow Deeds – explored weight and weightlessness, time and duration, surface and form, the body, the object and representation. Re-forming intuited and remembered actions, Anne wove together works which stand alone as vital physical performances and as ‘shadow deeds’ explore the processes of making, experiencing and viewing.

In an article about Autobituary, the writer, Judith Palmer, wrote:

“Bean had been both reflecting on the role of the older artist, and revisiting her own early work…. she recreated 30 actions that she’d first made between the ages of 18 and 24 (1969-1974) and performed them to camera (1996-2005). These ‘reformations’ as she described them, she titled ‘shadow deeds’, and showed in her recent work Autobituary. But which was the shadow? The deed which existed a third of a century ago, fractured into a few black and white photographs, and the hazy testimonies of a handful of witnesses? Or the crisp colour footage of the freshly committed but copied act? Which was more authentic – a lifeless record of the original, or re-embodied experience?

The question of what remains is performance art’s most enduring dilemma. Is it possible to make work which transfixes its audience unequivocally in the here and now, but which still leaves something meaningful for posterity? Photographic documentation is no less subjective or untrustworthy than the recollections of witnesses. When the bulk of a video camera swoops down between the audience and the artist, it critically alters the tension/tense of the live event. This artist isn’t here with you, in the present, it says: she’s there with someone else in the future”.

At each venue, Anne also re-made a performance. At Matt’s Gallery she performed Wakey-Wakey with early collaborators Martin von Haselberg and Brian Routh (Kipper Kids). The 5 hour performance with the stipulation of ‘no documentation’ was an attempt to stay in ‘present time’ with the Kipper Kids. In Colchester, she made a 24 hour performance based on a piece from 1973 entitled Until the Flowers Die. In Hull, she returned sand and salt to the sea in Homecoming whilst Paul Burwell drummed in the sea, the tide finally ‘consuming’ the sound of his drums.

Autobituary: Shadow Deeds is a visually rich book of images and text produced in conjunction with this exhibition. It is a book within a book, comparing two sets of photographic ‘evidence’ from two series of almost identical performances made years apart. It contains three newly commissioned essays by Guy Brett, Sally O’Reilly and Miria Swain, and a DVD of Anne Bean’s Shadow Deeds performances.

Autobituary : Shadow Deeds is published by Matt’s Gallery in association with Artsadmin and firstsite, Colchester. Distributed by Cornerhouse also available from Matt’s Gallery, Unbound and Artsadmin

Links:
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20121205050411/http://www.annebean.net/past-projects/2001-2010/76
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20121205050357/http://www.annebean.net/past-projects/2001-2010/189
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20121205050135/http://www.annebean.net/past-projects/2001-2010/75