Anne Bean, Paul Burwell (1949 – 2007) and Richard Wilson lived and worked in Butlers Wharf in the 1970’s, where they explored the Thames and other waterways, mostly by boat, sharing their excitement of the countless visual dynamics and unexpected sounds, often on vast scales, that they encountered. They combined these experiences and their long individual engagement in performance art, sound, drumming, sculpture, installation and multi-media to stimulate the ideas that became the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, formed in 1983.

Throughout the eighties, after their first performance at the London Musicians Collective, they made dozens of events and specially commissioned works worldwide, performing in spaces from cathedrals to harbours, bridges to sheds, museums to mud, international festivals to fish factories and forts.

Their materials included scrap metal, electric motors, glass, early warning systems, explosives, paraffin, gases, (including propane, helium and hydrogen), low and high-pressure steam, compressed air, high-pressure water jets, high-powered wind and lightening machines, resonating chambers with giant megaphones, re-animated boatyard machinery, truck springs, cranes, tidal energies, boats, barges, fire and pyrotechnics, often specifically commissioned.

Their instruments, all acoustic, exploited environmental nuances such as echoes and tidal differentials, producing wide varieties of sounds from deep, meditative organ-like drones of the pyrophones played with propane to tumultuous rumbling explosions of huge propane-filled weather-balloons.  

They developed relationships with pyrotechnicians such as Wilf Scott, le Maitre Fireworks and El Diablo in Mexico and instigated a range of working relationships with artists and groups such as the sound poet Bob Cobbing, the American percussionist Z'EV, Miraculous Engineering, Thames Steam Launch Company, Eel Pie Marine, Ballooning World, Kathak dancers, historic re-creation societies and remote-control helicoptor enthusiasts.

They serve up adventures in music, sculpture and performance that dazzle the eyes, astonish the ears and stimulate the imagination of viewers with an unorthodox magic. 

Time Out Award, 1988

Anne Bean and Richard Wilson are participants in Recollect: Artists, Legacies, Futures (2023-2024), a programme supported by Arts Council England, awarding 10 places to artists and estates on Art360’s archiving programme.