Bella Abel
Bella Abel is a mixed-media artist working between painting, sculpture, and drawing. Using saturated colour, humour, and heavily textured surfaces, her practice explores identity, belonging, and the emotional contradictions that sit beneath everyday self-presentation. She is drawn to moments where control feels fragile, and where internal feeling and outward appearance fall out of sync.
Working with acrylic paint, clay, recycled plastics, fabric, and found objects, Abel builds raised, dimensional surfaces that blur the boundary between painting and sculpture. Her visual language draws on Papua New Guinean art and carving traditions alongside Australian urban and coastal landscapes, combining flat graphic forms with sculptural relief. Humour and absurdity are central to her work, allowing difficult or darker themes to remain accessible and emotionally legible. Through drawing and observation, Abel exaggerates gesture and posture, often using urban animals as stand-ins for people.
These figures offer playful yet pointed reflections on vulnerability, adaptation, and shared environments.
Learn more: www.instagram.com/bell_a_bel/
Bella will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.