Review: Conversātiō: In the company of bees
Reviewed by: Peter Simpson
Authors:
Anne Noble with Zara Stanhope and Anna Brown
Publisher:
Massey University Press
ISBN:
9780995140752
Date Published:
23 September 2021
Pages:
172
Format:
Hardback
RRP:
$60.00
Anne Noble is rightly considered one of the most accomplished New Zealand photographers with a body of work stretching more than three decades notable for its beauty, its meditative thoughtfulness and its variety. Among series of special distinction are her photographs of the Whanganui River, of a convent in London and of Antarctica.
Since about 2012 Noble’s work has focused almost exclusively on honeybees, resulting in more than a dozen solo and collaborative exhibitions in France and throughout Australia and New Zealand. Her bee projects are brought together in this unusual book, designed by Anna Brown, edited by Zara Stanhope and encompassing not only numerous photographs but essays, interviews and even a fascinating anthology of writing about bees from the ancient Greeks to Sylvia Plath.
As she tells Zara Stanhope in an absorbing and extensive interview (almost 20 pages long), Noble’s interest in bees began in the most immediate and practical way with the installation of a hive in her Wellington garden:
“About 10 years ago I installed a hive at the bottom of our garden, as many of our fruit trees were flowering but not setting fruit. To look after bees involves slowing down and learning through observing how the hive functions. Opening the hive with a friend who had once been a professional beekeeper, finding the queen and discovering the workings of the hive – its complexity and the beauty of bees both individually and collectively – was magic…Over time, out of a kind of reverie, I began to see the world differently – as a complex network of relationships that a colony of bees makes palpably visible…Learning about bees and the hive became a passion.”
Discovering how to integrate her passion for bees with the art of photography has involved more than a decade of experimentation with different photographic techniques including tintypes, photograms, electron microscope images, together with images from more conventional cameras. Noble has involved a surprising number of other people in her projects including beekeepers, scientists, cabinet makers, teachers, school children and museum professionals. The collaborative genius of bees as a species has inspired Noble to work collaboratively herself, with many of her main co-workers contributing to this book.
Nowhere is this collaborative impulse more evident than in the work from which the book derives its title: Conservātiō, a term which includes the idea of conversation but also “the practice of listening attention, or attunement, a quality often missing in conversations,” which she saw as central to monastic life. In 2015 Noble was commissioned to make an installation about bees for a decommissioned Cistercian monastery in France that had become a contemporary arts centre.
During a residency there Noble noticed that swarms of bees inhabited the crevices of the building’s stonework and decided to “embed these qualities of listening attention and keeping company with bees in the heart of a suite of works,” even including a live colony of bees.
Raised a Roman Catholic, Noble’s empathy for the contemplative life had already years ago informed her beautiful series In the presence of angels (1989 - 90) about the lives of a silent order of Benedictine nuns in a convent in London.
Conservātiō was subsequently re-created within Queensland Art Gallery during the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial in 2018-19. The story of how a cabinet maker, a biological scientist, beekeepers and museum staff combined with Noble to bring this extraordinary project to completion is told in several parts of the book.
An important part of Noble’s bee photographs is her acute awareness of the vulnerability of the species to environmental degradation and the spread of bacterial and viral diseases and parasites. In her own words: “I became morbidly preoccupied with the death of the species and how I as an artist might draw on my own sense of horror at the impact of biodiversity loss.” Her exquisite Dead Bee portraits and delicate photographs of dead bees’ wings are especially poignant in this regard and are among the many highlights of this remarkable and beautifully produced book.
Reviewed by Peter Simpson
