Nº 61 Bella Bonner-Evans
The curator and writer talks spooky cliffs, nihilistic painters and sterling silver ribbons.
We’re back with Bella Bonner-Evans. Read on to find out what she’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for secret recommendations every week.
Bella Bonner-Evans is a workaholic. During the week, she can be found sending excessively lengthy emails from her desk at STUDIO WEST in Notting Hill. On the weekends, she writes articles for mags such as Elephant, Artsy, Bricks and FAD, punctuated by sad rainy walks with her dog and occasional meetups with friends (who has the time?).
☞ THE ‘SLETTER TO KNOW The Spittle babies, everyone’s favorite anonymous artworld ingénues, bring the good stuff to my inbox every week - frankly I can’t get enough. Think of Spittle as an art-world Gossip Girl cum ‘things to do’ guide (but with things you actually want to do). Their exhibition recs are straight fire, saving me endless hours scrolling Seb’s Art List to find the private views I will inevitably add to my diary and not attend due to incurable tiredness and art-induced malaise. Their Hot Links section keeps me updated on the news, something I otherwise avoid (it’s just too sad, I can’t deal) and the Add-To-Cart segment is my bank account’s archnemesis. Be sure to scroll to the end of the ‘sletter for their parting shot - a witty little tidbit sure to leave you giggling for the rest of the day. Subscribe HERE, if you haven’t already.
☞ BRING ON THE BLUES: Forget self-care, it’s the year of leaning into the blues. Released in November 2023, Laura Poitras’ documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is the perfect dark, wet and miserable February night watch. Spanning Nan Goldin’s life and career to date, the film is structured in seven chapters, each beginning with either archival footage or a photographic sequence reminiscent of canonical Goldin works such as The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. The film is primarily focused on Goldin’s efforts to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family accountable for the U.S. opioid epidemic. Number one on the ArtReview’s 2023 Power 100 List, Goldin founded the advocacy group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017 after her addiction to Oxycontin and a near fatal fentanyl overdose. Since then, P.A.I.N. has lobbied museums and art institutions to reject Sackler family philanthropy. In the film, we see P.A.I.N. demonstrations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur, the Louvre and the Guggenheim Museum. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is deeply moving, upsetting and important: a veritable must-watch, it's available HERE on iPlayer for FREEEE. God bless the BBC.
☞ EAST LONDON AT ITS FINEST: I recently co-hosted a brunch at Café Cecilia for young women in art, and omg honestly the food blew me away. I never knew a humble chicken could taste so good (I am primarily a vegetarian, oops). Founded by Max Rocha, brother to the queen of ultra-femme tulle, face bows and sparkly barrettes, Simone Rocha, the chef cut his teeth at The River Café, St. John Bread & Wine and Spring before going out on his own to create East London’s trendiest haunt. Perhaps this is the most obvious recommendation of all time, the kind found on any Time Out ‘Best Restaurants in East London’ guide, but honestly if you haven’t been yet, just take it from me and make a booking HERE.
☞ NIHILISTIC MUSINGS: Issy Wood is to art girls as coke is to finance bros - we just cannot get enough. I have tried to debunk the hype, searched for reasons to go against the grain but I simply can’t. Issy Wood is everything. Her show at Carlos/Ishikawa earlier this year was iconic, Diet Coke and facemasks galore. An image from the show has remained my phone background ever since. In case you haven’t got it yet, I am a stan. During a pre-Christmas stroll (desperate hunt for last-minute gifts), I found myself at Whitechapel Gallery and, instead of purchasing the presents I had left the house for, I brought myself Issy Wood’s 2020–2019 collected writings But Who’s Counting, and I haven’t put it down since. It’s darkly comic, moody, misanthropic and yet overarchingly uplifting. If you, like me, fear that you love Issy Wood more than your own boyfriend/dog/potential-first-born then dive in - available from Carlos/Ishikawa’s website HERE.
☞ EVERYTHING WITH BOWS ON: In case you didn’t get the memo, 2023 was the year of the bow - don’t take it from me, instead put your trust in Vogue, Harper’s, Refinery 29 or The Standard. Born on the runway and taken to absurd extremes on Tik Tok (bows on ice cubes, loo rolls, sertraline bottles and pickles) bowmania is here to stay (I hope). As a reformed horse girl with the desire to infantilize myself lest I have to take financial responsibility for my life, I am into the whole ‘girlhood’, coquette, tulle, 18th-century vibe (not ballet flats - that’s a step too far).
If you feel the same, get excited about London-based artist Leo Costelloe. Drawing inspiration from popular culture and personal experience, Leo explores the transient and sentimental nature of objects. The artist’s hauntingly beautiful works in glass, metal and silver are delicately imbued with the lexicon of hyperfemininity (dolls, necklaces, aforementioned bows). I am delighted to be exhibiting Leo’s work, alongside the immensely talented Ki Yoong and Florence Reekie at STUDIO WEST in The Blush Upon Her Cheek, open until the 22nd of February.
☞ SPOOKY CLIFFS: During Covid summer (don’t remember which one, it’s all a blur) a couple of friends and I googled ‘beach near London’. One chaotic whiz down the motorway later, we arrived at Birling Gap in East Sussex. We clambered out the car and ran into the ice-cold sea, where we were embraced with a long-forgotten sense of youthful freedom. Little did we know, Birling Gap is equal parts beautiful and sinister. Very sadly, Beach Head, where we had arrived on that blisteringly hot day, is an infamous suicide spot. To add insult to injury, occultist Aleister Crowley, named by the 1940s tabloid press as the Wickedest Man in the World, cursed Devil’s Chimney (the rock at the foot of Beachy Head) in 1897. He prophesied that when Devil’s Chimney collapsed, ‘hellfire and brimstone’ would engulf Eastbourne. Since it toppled in 2001, Eastbourne has remained intact; however, local rumor has it that Crowley appears to the suicidal and pulls them off the cliff. One of the white witches of Eastbourne has been attempting to break his curse for years, performing rituals at the cliff edge. As you can probably tell, I became somewhat obsessed with the history of this mystical, entrancing and surreal site, and I strongly recommend visiting and delving into its strange history.
☞ POTENTIALLY UNPOPULAR OPINION: Elf Bars are here to stay. In a very humans-of-late-capitalism moment, my boyfriend recently saw a man out for a run with a Lost Mary in his mouth - he was fully hands-free vape-running. Sorry environment, but we are clearly not ready to live without them. Vape recycling points - potential solution?
♪ LISTENING TO: JULIA FOX = LIFE. Turns out Spotify has free audiobooks (maybe this has been around for ages and I’m just characteristically late to the game). On Helen Neven’s extremely enthusiastic recommendation, I recently listened to Julia Fox’s memoir Down the Drain. Somewhere between Fox’s vocal fry and finding out she once had a fashion brand financed by her sugar daddy, I fell in love.
☠ HATES: people who walk slowly; how enraged I get by people who walk slowly; the desire to give up sugar; the sugary treat I need at 4pm daily; the comedown from my sugary treat; my dog molting all over my flat; hoovering; waking up before 10am; cold feet; bags of things to take to the charity shop that sit impatiently by my door; when the tube screams and it feels like a murder is happening inside your brain; the whole ‘ins and outs’ new year thing; wearing anything other than pajamas; galleries that make dramatic statements about how they are reforming the art world while doing everything the same as everyone else - proof is in the pudding kids; the cost of framing; the cost of living.
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