Artist : Harriet Bell
Title : Untitled
Medium : pencil and book cutting collage on paper
Dimensions : 70 x 100 cm | 39.3 x 27.5 in



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Harriet Bell’s artwork is multifaceted ranging from sculptural components, to installation and drawing with collage. Her works are made in private and very rarely shown publicly. There is no specific narrative to the work but Bell often ‘borrows’ words and images and rearranges, casting like seeds. Her objective is to make work that is completely integrated; each piece to contain it’s meaning within but emanating that meaning as a presence around it. There is a sense of a narrative that once again exists beyond words. Bell is an artist who remains suspicious of artist’s statements, feeling that there is a sense that translating the meaning of the work in to the written word distracts from the language that the work itself contains. So her works must be experienced and the results of doing so are profoundly moving and personal. The only words present in the exhibition catalogue for her most recent solo exhibition catalogue were “We all have to leave”, this simple ‘summing up’ leaves little doubt that Bell is an artist who is able to just say it, without having to say much at all, it also gives clear insight in to the preoccupation of her artistic and existential questioning. Her sculpture and installations utilise materials that she finds in hedgerows or pound shops or anywhere for that matter. Harriet Bell is hoarder or collector, which is evident from the specimens she gathers and arranges. Materials such as stones, dried roots held inside milkbottles, empty eggshells, wiry stalks and folded cloth, are all examples from her collections. Like the remains from an archeological dig, works often feels archaic, like a museum archive, of drawers that are brimming with specimens all held under a single pin in categorical lines. Bell's works on paper, like the forensic trace of plant or animal life, incorporating collage with exquisite drawing offer alternative evolutions, of life beyond. Rather like a botanist uses specimens for scientific experiments, Bell then selectively displays her findings and drawings taking us beyond the realms of science and our present understanding of life and what lies beyond. The ever-changing cycle of life. Absence, presence, death and decay, growth and metamorphosis.

Harriet Bell is a British artist born in Turkey in 1950. She has lived and studied in the USA, Jamaica, South America and France, and currently lives in West Cornwall. Despite her reclusive nature Harriet Bell’s works have been exhibited internationally, with major works acquired for private and public collections. Bell was a prizewinner at Jacksonville Museum in Florida in 1980, the Halifax Art Festival Merit Award winner in 1980, the Arkansas Art Centre Purchase Award winner in 1984 and the Jacksonville Museum Purchase Award winner in 1986. She was awarded the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in 1987 and the SECCA/RHR Southeastern Artists Fellowship in 1989. She has exhibited at the North Miami Museum, Jacksonville Art Museum, South Florida Art Museum, Florida and Cantini Musee in Paris, Provincial Museum Haselt in Belgium, Centre d’Art in Barcelona, Museum of Fine Arts in Miami, the Tate St Ives and extensively throughout the USA, UK and Europe. Her work is in number of art collections including the British Museum, the Florida House of Representatives, Florida State University, The Keleia Collection, City of Orlando, Arkansas Art Centre, Jacksonville Art Centre, The Rouse Company, Vero Beach Centre for the Arts, Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, Southern Bell.


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