Bella Geldart (she/her)
Winner
Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries: Selected Artist
Informed by my love-hate relationship with British identity, my work aims to caricature the landscape of contemporary society. I draw upon familiar, everyday rituals and objects that are recognisable from all corners of British society which I isolate in their simplicity and theatricality, presenting them as iconography.
I am currently interested in the role sports plays as a theatre of the absurd and a spectre of nationalism, using a simple game of tennis as a structure within which to investigate ideas surrounding play, applause and patriotism, seeking to pervert everyday behaviours out of context. I consider binaries within society, often exploring gender through masculine and feminine polarisations and identities, reflected in the consistent casting of female performers framed within a sports context, male voices voyeuristic in their commentary.
Working across the mediums of sculpture and performance I use the video camera, costumes, props and drawing to find form in relation to a particular site. I utilise the different formats of both live and recorded performance practice; the relationship between live and recorded, improvised and directed, image and sound synchronicity, and the interplay between these elements is central to my practice.