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Bell moved from South Africa to New Zealand at the start of the Covid pandemic. “I was very aware that I was flying from one of the most stable land masses to this oceanic outcrop. The shift from the solid to this watery world emerging from the sea really stuck with me. Plus, I’d travelled to what is basically the opposite side of the globe,” she says. These works chart the profound impact of Bell's resettlement on her life. Indigenous Pohutukawa trees and cliff faces that drop off sharply into choppy waters below represent the artist's new home and shift in psychic landscape.
“I’m constantly reminded of the line in Laurie Anderson’s song Speak my Language,” says Bell. In it the American musician says, ‘Where I come from, it’s a long thin thread – across an ocean, down a river of red.’ It’s that sense of the journey down a river of red being my bloodline. I was crossing the ocean back to my mother.” Mother Land is a personal offering of ephemeral mixed media artworks and bronze sculptures that honour the importance of place and the people who've come before us.
“South Africa is my motherland, but New Zealand is the land of my mother. She was born there though lived a huge portion of her life in South Africa too,” Bell notes. “I need to see whether maybe I can have a life in both places. Africa has a heartbeat. It's a doof, doof, doof, a sense of rhythm, a sense of love. Whereas Waiheke Island on the Eastern side of New Zealand is gentle and feminine which has helped me re-discover that part of myself. I realise that in some way both these places are indelibly in my blood.”
Mother Land opens at Everard Read Gallery on Thu, Feb 8.
