23/6 - 24/7/2018
EXHIBITION FOREWORD :
‘That Luminous Body That Care of The Soul’ from Harriet Bell (b. 1950) is a collection of intricate, almost forensic, works on large sheets of paper incorporating delicate drawing with collage taken from found books. These ultra sensitive works record a seemingly dream-like, interconnected journey. Rather like a botanist using specimens for scientific analysis, Bell selectively displays her findings, taking us beyond the realms of prosaic understanding of life and, indeed, what lies beyond. The ever-changing cycle of life. Absence, presence, death and decay, growth and metamorphosis all ‘feel’ pertinent when looking at her visions...
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Bell’s works are made in private and very rarely seen. There is no specific narrative to the work but Bell often ‘borrows’ words and images from an extensive library of books and often rearranges, this stimuli which are then cast like seeds. Her objective is to make work that is completely integrated; each piece to contain it’s intrinsic albeit it non-explicit meaning within, but emanating that meaning as a presence around it..
Harriet Bell is an artist reluctant to furnish her work with artist statements. Feeling that there is a sense that attempting to translate the meaning of the work distracts from the truth that the work itself contains. The only words presented as a statement, in her last exhibition catalogue simply stated “We all have to leave”. Leave for where? we ponder… What we feel, feels less final.
