Alison Knowles | Sea Bean

Alison Knowles

Sea Bean

Düsseldorf, Germany: Edition Hundtermark, 1978

5.5 x 9.9 x 4.5 cm.

Edition of 80 signed and numbered copies

The 56th boxed work by Edition Hundertmark holds a plastic container with a single bean inside and an offset printed card. The instructions read "Empty out the bean/put cylinder to the ear/hear the sea". 

Knowles has worked with Beans throughout her long career, with other works including Bean Rolls, Bean Bags, A Bean Concordance, Bean Garden and The Bean Sequences. The artist denies a particular symbolism for the food, but admits some personal connections: 

“It’s that, during the war years, especially if one didn’t have a lot of money, beans were a staple,” she said. “I knew how to cook all different types of beans and feed sometimes large groups of people. The thing I like, too, is that I can go over the world, and there’d always be beans. There might not be meat, there might not be whiskey, but there’ll be beans.”