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In her practice, Gala Bell conjures a sense of alchemy by transforming everyday substances into gestural, vivid paintings and installations.
In her practice, Gala Bell conjures a sense of alchemy by transforming everyday substances into gestural, vivid paintings and installations. Employing unconventional materials and processes, such as casting sculptures from sugar and fizzy sweets or deep-frying paintings, Gala explores systems of value and the desires that drive modern-day consumption through the lens of materiality and the absurd. “I’m fascinated by how different materials interact, including viscous liquids, how they dissolve, solidify or transform, and the ways everyday substances can reveal deeper structures of power, memory, and desire,” she explains.
Based in London, Gala holds a BA from City and Guilds Art School and an MA from the Royal College of Art. Creating layered yet smooth canvases, Gala’s paintings are strikingly seductive for their tactile quality. Often featuring abstracted yet recognisable forms – luscious cherries, delicate floral shapes or undulating liquids – her works both reflect and evoke desire.
Inspired by the Fluxus movement and its critique of consumerism, Gala often incorporates everyday materials into her works to question the role of art-as-commodity. Most recently, she has been experimenting with sugar as an alternative to marble dust, using it as the main ingredient in a new series of silk paintings in which paint is pushed through the canvas from behind. With every mark and brushstroke made with a single motion from back to front, these works are exact documentations of the maker’s physical engagement with the canvas – “where every decision was made to stay”, notes Gala. “The silk paintings are all done in one shot, nothing can be erased. There’s a lot of jeopardy and uncertainty to the process, but to me it embodies revenge, the pure freedom of the 1950s and 60s. Over time this has become an important symbol for me in terms of what the viewer sees. Initially the works can feel daunting – bright, textured, chaotic – but upon closer looking they reveal a strange sense of comfort within their clashes and tensions.”
These abstract works of varying scales act as two-dimensional counterparts to her pastel-coloured sugar sculptures, exploring the mutability and historical undercurrents of her material, both a sustenance and cultural marker. “In socialist contexts, sugar existed as a site of tension, both celebrated and restricted, ordinary and coveted; it marked boundaries between public and private life, scarcity and excess.” In a similar vein, her piece Fry Up – a sculptural installation of deep fried canvases submerged in glass tanks filled with sunflower oil – traces the cultural history of tempura, transforming it into an artistic medium and in turn, the studio into a laboratory. “Tempura, originally marking the breaking of a fast and the end of a period of purity, became an intriguing, sacrilegious medium to work with. From Portuguese abstinence traditions to Japanese emperors, I was fascinated by how it transcended time, social classes and hierarchies”.
In recent years, Gala has exhibited internationally and showed work at The London Design Festival, The Design Museum, The Korean Cultural Institute Berlin, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz Berlin and Galerie der HBKsaar in Saarsbrucken amongst others. Her sugar sculptures have also been commissioned by BBC One and Tate & Lyle, with a piece acquired by the Tate & Lyle archive in London. She was selected for residencies at the Villa Lena Art Foundation, as a creative contributor in 2023 and a Guest Artist for Artist Access to Colleges at New Buckinghamshire University in 2022. This July, 2025, she participated in a residency in Greece developing a new body of work involving photographic processes.