Anne Bean

'The volume has been conceived to actively resist easy narratives or linear timelines, instead combining commissioned critical essays from various academics, artists and accomplices, who each offer a personal and impassioned insight into their encounters with Bean. Between these, Bean's own collaged visual essays are peppered, each offering short commentaries and reflections on particular projects and themes. [...] Each page demonstrates her unsurpassable energy and ferocity through accounts which crystallize effervescent moments just enough to begin to grasp the enormous scope and intricacy of Bean's work while preserving the mystery intrinsic to her practice.'

'The book represents a significant addition to the history of live art in the UK in general and to the work of Anne Bean in particular. [...] Self Etc. places Bean's oeuvre into the history of experimental art and performance in the UK in the 1970s and 80s [...] Beautifully illustrated with color photographs and visual essays made by Bean for this book, Self Etc. also provides a critical and conceptual framework for understanding her work.'

'Anne Bean is a visionary artist who has troubled the boundaries of contemporary art for five decades. This book shows her to be a key and vibrant figure in live art.'

'But while Bean might challenge fixed ideas of the self and the artist in her performances, this books does not attempt a similar dismantling. Nor does it indicate the disregard for archiving and posterity that Johnson attributed to Bean. A large, square volume made more gallery and library shelves, it is co-published by the Live Art Development Agency as part of a series of surveys of individual artists; posterity is exactly what it aims for, and rightly so, given the lack of any other substantial study of Bean's huge body of work.'