About
Bella Milroy is an artist and writer who lives in her hometown of Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She works responsively through mediums of sculpture, drawings, photography, text, writing, gardening and curating. Her work explores how we touch and make contact with the world around us, with the hand-held being of particular significance. She makes work about making work (and being disabled) and not being able to make work (and being disabled). She is interested in the duality of every-day existence, and how things can be both beautiful/painful, both interesting/dull. This process-based practice is fundamental to her as a disabled artist, utilising and working with the significant limits and demands of living with a chronic illness, all mixed in with the detritus of domesticity. She is continually motivated by concepts of public and private spaces and where the sick and/or disabled body exists within them, themes which emerge throughout much of her work.
She is passionate about contributing to the cataloguing of disabled artists, as well as advocating for better, more accessible and enjoyable working experiences for disabled artists across the industry. Examples of this are found in many of her curatorial projects such as Soft Sanctuary (2019-2021), Mob-Shop (2021), and Further Afield (2022 and forthcoming 2024). She was Artistic Associate at Level Centre, Rowsley, Derbyshire 2021-23.
In 2015 she won the Birth Rites Collection Bi-Annual Award, part of which included her residency at the Women’s Art Library (WAL), based at Goldsmiths University of London. The time spent on residency at WAL resulted in her project and solo show, File Under Female.
She studied Fine Art (BA) at Nottingham Trent University 2010-2016.
Her favourite place to be is at her studio-allotment, where she is currently building a rose garden and playing with her A0 flower press.