REVEREND ETHAN ACRES
London Mission
17-26 October 2002
www.cca.rca.ac.uk/RevAc
A project organised by students on the Royal College of Art MA Curating Contemporary Art infoline +44 (0)20 7225 1513 f a projects PEARL Tate Modern The Eve Club Raised to take on the mantle of his circuit preacher stepfather in the poor rural south of America, the Reverend Ethan Acres seeks ‘to defeat the Devil in all his evil forms’ and strives to put the ‘fun back into fundamentalism’. Ordained by the World Christianship Ministries, the Reverend also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Acres’s practice includes elaborate and eccentric rituals, goofy biblical sculpture, home baking and esoteric digital prints. Reverend Acres plays on the history of the holy fool, fusing the flamboyant and the humorous with a deep and genuine spirituality. In recent years the Reverend has performed and exhibited in diverse locations across the globe, from Las Vegas to Latvia. He has presided over weddings at The Ice Hotel, Kyrna, Sweden and at the Sistine Chapel. His recent exhibitions include: Reverend Acres’s Rockin’ Millennium Countdown, Bronwyn Keenan Gallery, New York, 1999; Faith: The Impact of Judeo-Christian Religion on Art at the Millennium, Aldrich Museum, Connecticut, 2000; and The Magic Hour: The Convergence of Art and Las Vegas, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria, 2002. Reverend Acres is represented by Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California. Exhibition: The Guise of Satan, f a projects, 12 Bear Gardens, London SE1, 1726 October 2002, 10am6pm daily, admission free The sculptures and video of The Guise of Satan take as their subject the legendary glam-rock band KISS. Reverend Acres reveals ‘the true faces of Satan that each member of the band represented at their most powerful … telling the story of these four incarnations of Satan, and how they threatened the minds of four teenagers wandering all alone through the horror known as 1978′. Performance/Christening: Water Lilies: A Mass Christening, PEARL, 28 Old Nichol Street, London E2, 19 October, 4pm, admission free Jeff McMillan and Cornelia Parker invite you to participate in a mass christening that will include their firstborn, Lily, at Jeff’s East End project space, PEARL. Children of all ages are invited to come dressed as their favourite flower to be watered by the angel-gardener Reverend Acres and his holy watering can. Performance/Sermon: PANopticon, Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, Bankside, London SE1, 20 October 2002, 1pm, admission free The Reverend will deliver the first part of a Peter Pan trilogy with choral accompaniment. PANopticon will ‘deal with Foucault and Jung’s shadow theories and how in the end humanity’s divine nature can unlock our mundane prisons and spirit us away into the light … into Never Never Land’. Performance/Sermon: Snake in the Grass, The Eve Club, 189 Regent Street, London W1, 25 October 2002, 8pm, £2 admission The Eve Club’s coloured glass hydraulic dance floor, installed in 1953, is the only one of its kind in London. From this platform, and with the inspiration of the club’s Garden of Eden theme, Reverend Acres will portray ‘the seduction of the Mother of Creation by the Serpent’ in modern dance.
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