EMIT: a dialogue through time

About

  Bean is interested in the different ways artists have been influenced over the years by the permissive space that performance art has provided. 

‘Night Chant’ is a short film that explores her personal connections with five artists who sadly, and suddenly, died a few years ago. Two of them – Alexis Hunter and Rita Harris – were based next door, or very near, to Coleman Project Space during the seventies. In a recent Art Monthly interview, Bean said of these relationships: ‘We are each other’s archives and legacies’.

Hunter used photography to powerfully buck sexual, social and gender stereotypes, while Harris became a recognised master of t’ai chi, using her art as a healing tool – such as leading a ritual ceremony as part of Bean’s ‘365 dresses’, a CGP London commission performed locally in Southwark Park in 2005.

For the exhibition at Coleman Project Space, Bean has worked with performance photographer Manuel Vason, to create a series of images for the main gallery depicting sites of significance to the work and lives of Harris and Hunter. These include the room where Hunter made her most radical feminist works, such as ‘Domestic Warfare,’ 1975, and the park where Rita worked and taught t’ai chi. ‘Night Chant’ will be projected in the shed space, which will also become the site for Bean’s new performance work: ‘Secret conversations we didn’t know we were having’.