Park Nights: Becky Beasley and Chris Sharp's 13 pieces, 17 feet
Artist Becky Beasley’s performative project, 13 pieces, 17 feet, centred on Eadweard Muybridge’s extraordinary 1878 panoramic photograph of San Francisco, and a peculiar feature of railroad millionaire Charles Crocker’s house.
Performed by writer, performer and sound artist Melanie Wilson, this monologue in 13 parts and multiple voices follows an alternating structure between historical fictions and abstract texts, and incorporates exquisite details of archival photographs, creating an event that spirals slowly into the black hole at the centre of an extraordinary object.
The project was developed in collaboration with writer Chris Sharp and in partnership with Kingston Museum & Archive and the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, as part of Muybridge in Kingston.
Beasley was born in 1975 in Portsmouth, England, and currently lives and works in Antwerp. Beasley participated in Slow Movement at Kunsthalle Bern (2009), Word Event at Kunsthalle Basel (2008) and The Malady of Writing at MACBA (2009—2010). In 2010, she was commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston and the Serpentine Pavilion to produce her first institutional projects. She was also selected for the British Art Show 7. In 2009, she published her second artist’s book, Thomas Bernard Malamud. She is represented by Laura Bartlett Gallery, London and Office Baroque, Antwerp.
Chris Sharp (b. 1974, USA) lives and works in Paris. His writing has appeared in Art Review, frieze, Kaleidoscope, Art Monthly, among other magazines. He co-curated with Joanna Fiduccia The Zero Budget Biennial,, and co-curated with Gianni Jetzer Under Destruction, a survey of destruction in contemporary art, which took place at the Tinguely Museum, Basel from October 2010 to January 2011 and the Swiss Institute, New York from March to April 2011, and prepared A Necessarily Incomplete Anthology of Withdrawal, published by Archive Books, Berlin, in 2011.
Melanie Wilson is an award-winning writer, performer and sound artist based in London. She makes performances, installations and sound walks that live in theatre and cinema spaces and in the street. Her solo work includes ‘Simple Girl’, ‘Iris Brunette’, ‘Mari Me Archie’, ‘The View From Here’ and ‘every minute, always’ and has been presented nationally and internationally. She has collaborated with Rotozaza, Coney, Clod Ensemble, Shunt, Chris Goode, Boilerhouse, A2, Peter Arnold and Abigail Conway. She is currently a BAC Supported Artist and her work is produced by Fuel Theatre.
Park Nights
Park Nights is an annual series of music, theatre, performances, talks and film screenings staged on Friday nights in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed in 2010 by Jean Nouvel. Park Nights culminated on the weekend of 16th and 17th October with the Serpentine Gallery Map Marathon, the latest in the Serpentine’s series of Marathon events, conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
