Shaan Bevan

Confluence, a duo show with @yenprofile is open at @palmer.gallery in London. My new works on paper are made using iron and copper powders, fixed through chemical patination processes and drawn into with pencil. The images depict the waters of the Taf estuary in my father’s hometown in Wales, from a recent trip we took together in September. They explore memory loss and dementia - informed by shifting cycles of light on water, weather, extreme tides, material transformation, erosion, unstable elements, auto-destructive principles and mark making through erasure. These works are for him x

Hospital 2025 Shown w @zaza___milano___napoli at @artissimafair I’m trying to describe a feeling, the body within the hospital / sick room. The cornered instal and the image represent the tension between infinitude and the container, spirit and the limitations of illness, the shimmering eternal elemental material eroticism of body, pure love terror suffering humour dirt poetry positioned within endless waiting rooms, bureaucracy, boredom, nausea, longing, depression, forgotten days/weeks/months/years. The sea of infinity holds the tension of opposites ♾️ sick bed is a house of the gods ♾️ Love to all x

Shaan Bevan @artissimafair

6 months of drawing shimmer ~~~~~ Simple, devotional Love to all

🔈 Sound On 🔈 For these collaborative brass works, Owen placed a resonator on the back of the metal, so that sound waves are conducted through the brass which causes them to reverberate and act like speakers. The sounds are recordings taken from the forests of the Montaigne Noir in the South of France. Owen found two ash trees which were growing into one another and placed a geophone within each tree, recording the sounds of bending wood and creaking timber. Each work is playing sound from each individual tree, acting as a type of sonic diptych. For the patina, the surface of the brass sheets were stained using various chemicals and buried beneath layers of sheep’s wool and sawdust, creating these chemical abstracted landscapes. The application of a home-grown mushroom bio-culture sealed the work through a process called bio-passivation, which also intensified the patina’s colouring. 🫀🫁 [Slides 2-3] BELLY OF THE EARTH Shaan Bevan and Owen Pratt, 2024 Beauveria Bassiana fungal culture, chemically patinated hammered brass sheet, electroacoustic transducer, amplifier, single channel audio, artist frame 157 x 203 cm [Slides 3-4] SHRIEKS FROM A MOUNTAIN GIVING BIRTH (LUNGS) Shaan Bevan and Owen Pratt, 2024 Beauveria Bassiana fungal culture, chemically patinated hammered brass sheet, electroacoustic transducer, amplifier, single channel audio, artist frame 157 x 203 🫀🫁 For any enquiries, please DM or email [email protected].

💦 POND (LYMPHNODE) 💦 While in her mid-twenties, Shaan Bevan was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and her experiences with treatment and recovery became the foundation of her artistic inspiration. In Ex-Voto, Shaan has created a series of drawings inspired by early cellular histology textbooks, which detail bodily tissues and cellular structures. These works delve into the material makeup of internal biological systems while inviting a poetic interpretation of these structures as ambiguous landscapes. Each drawing in the exhibition is a dedication to someone in Shaan’s life - a form of Ex-Voto - or offering used throughout human history to ward off illness and danger. Pond (Lymphnode) is dedicated to her our own journey through illness and treatment, channelling the ancient idea of ex-voto and combining to form work imbued with an aura of good health and fortune. 🫀🫁 POND (LYMPHNODE) Shaan Bevan, 2024 Pencil on paper under hand-blown glass, artist frame 74 x 91 cm 🫀🫁 For any enquiries, please DM or email [email protected].

✨ Spotlighting ✨ CARDIAC TISSUE (FLOODPLAINS) Shaan Bevan, 2024 Pencil on paper under hand-blown glass, artist frame 46 x 88 cm 🫀🫁 “In Ex-Voto, bodily systems are explored alongside a framework of geological processes of deposition, transformation and extraction. And whilst the works depict internal biological systems, they encourage a poetic reading into these structures as ambiguous landscapes. The end result pushes these drawings towards the natural world - a lymphnode becomes a pond, a ventricular cavity becomes a marbled, rock-like surface and fallopian tubes become deep-sea fauna - blurring the boundaries between the body and nature”. Excerpt from the Ex-Voto exhibition text. 🫀🫁 For any enquiries about Shaan’s work, please DM or email [email protected].

🪨 Ex-Voto Mounds 🪨 “Two free standing scaffolding ‘mounds’ occupy the space in Ex-Voto, intended to represent the structure of the Montdardier quarry, an ancient seabed close to Shaan and Owen’s home in the Cévennes mountains, which has provided many local artists with lithographic limestone. In the quarry, each layer of limestone has been shaped by individual tropical storms, chiselling each layer over thousands of years. Shaan’s drawings are embedded into the body of the quarry ‘mounds’, installed at different elevations to replicate the ridged shapes of its walls. The drawings take the form of medical diagrams and microscopic images, reflecting both layers of human experience and trauma while, in some instances, echoing the masonry strata of the quarry. In Ex-Voto, bodily systems are explored alongside a framework of geological processes of deposition, transformation and extraction. And whilst the works depict internal biological systems, they encourage a poetic reading into these structures as ambiguous landscapes. The end result pushes these drawings towards the natural world - a lymphnode becomes a pond, a ventricular cavity becomes a marbled, rock-like surface and fallopian tubes become deep-sea fauna - blurring the boundaries between the body and nature.” Excerpt from the Ex-Voto exhibition text. 🫀🫁 [Slide 2] FALLOPIAN TUBES (ANTHOPELURA ELEGANTISSIMA RELEASES HER ANTIGENS) Shaan Bevan, 2024 Pencil on paper under hand-blown glass, artist frame 82 x 90 cm [Slide 4] POND (LYMPHNODE) Shaan Bevan, 2024 Pencil on paper under hand-blown glass, artist frame 74 x 91 cm [Slide 6] CEREBRAL CORTEX (DRAWING IN THE SAND) Shaan Bevan, 2024 Iron and gum arabic on paper, hand-blown glass, artist frame 98 x 85 cm [Slide 7] CARDIAC TISSUE (FLOODPLAINS) Shaan Bevan, 2024 Pencil on paper under hand-blown glass, artist frame 46 x 88 cm 🫀🫁 For any enquiries about Shaan’s work, please DM or email [email protected].

🔜 Shaan Bevan 🔜 Shaan will be exhibiting in Palmer Gallery’s fifth show, Ex-Voto, which opens on Tuesday 8th October, 6pm. 🫀🫁 Shaan typically draws detailed seascapes that are often quite turbulent as they were intended to mirror the internal state of her body when she was undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Since she has been in remission, she has been reclaiming these chemicals in various ways, staining the materials she works with. For Ex-Voto, Shaan has created a new series of drawings inspired by early cellular histology textbooks, which detail bodily tissues and cellular structures. These works delve into the material makeup of internal biological systems while inviting a poetic interpretation of these structures as ambiguous landscapes. Her practice seeks to understand the origins of her own physiological pathologies, exploring the limitations of medical science and situating her illness and recovery within the broader context of earth systems, deep time, and the evolution of life on Earth. 🫀🫁 Shaan (b. 1990) is an American born artist based in the Montaigne Noir in southern France. She completed her MFA at the Slade in 2023, and has since exhibited with Des Bains in London and at Feria Material in Mexico City and Zaza Gallery in Naples and Milan. Shaan was part of Palmer Gallery’s group exhibition Land, Sea, Air in May 2024.

A joy to have contributed artwork to my ultimate fam @severinblack and @owenpratt gorgeous new record ‘duet’ Edition of 20 hand painted vinyl available for preorder at @archaicvaults archaicvaults.bandcamp.com ‘Severin Black and Owen Pratt explore the rhythms within earth-borne sounds on their debut LP, following on from their Untitled cassette that birthed the Archaic Vaults label in 2020. These seven tracks exist both as duets and as momentary respite from the isolation both musicians faced during the pandemic. Ritual routine visits across two years of solitude. Long nights spent in dim lighting as negronis gradually dilute in the heat. Much of this album was recorded amidst a backdrop of townships with murky histories of sectarian religious conflict, labour shortages and abandoned properties, against the common notion of southern France solely as a tourist destination. A duet can imply certain rules of engagement. Not all recordings on this album, however, are a duet between two people. VII (Black Metal) consists of two microphones left to surveil the streets below a third floor window, feeding directly into magnetic tape deeper in the recesses. IX (Snares) is an improvised dance between a bass amplifier’s sub frequencies and an activated snare drum. II (Subterranean River) captures limbs as they shift the gravel terrain below a weary cavernous stream. The recordist turns performer, the environment becomes performer too. Either could and often does serve as a duelling partner amongst these documentations. Each edition has been hand painted by Shaan Bevan using powdered iron and seawater collected in the southernmost region of France where half of the album was recorded, and applied to the whole edition as one giant canvas’ 🐺 Video girl princess Gigi 🐺

Super precious documentation of q⃣   u⃣   a⃣   r⃣   r⃣   y⃣ at @zaza___milano___napoli 📷 @danilo_donzelli_fotografia Continuing my material love affair w @verrerie_de_saint_just blown glass, with all the evidence of liquid form captured in bubbles and ripples that play w the way you see the image, hard to document in its wobbly glory ~~~ Lithographic layers, oceanic origin stories, heat / pressure, calm / rupture, extraction / deposition, open wounds. 🫁 Quarry is body 🫁

Thank you to everyone who came to the opening of Quarry Open by appointment @zaza___milano___napoli Until September 14th 23 Via Posillipo Napoli Xxxx