Gavin Bell Day Anatomy

27 June –
25 July 2026

Sutton Gallery is pleased to present Day Anatomy, an exhibition by London-based Australian artist Gavin Bell. A re-presentation of the exhibition which took place at Mackintosh Lane, London in December 2025, the exhibition brings together a series of framed drawings and sculptural elements.

Bell’s drawings employ an assembly of mediums (graphite, pencil, watercolour, oil) and found museological materials (mountboard, glassine) to insinuate hidden, metaphysical structures that undermine theoretical understanding or representational logic. His draughting process kindles imagery without strict depiction, realising that any latent manifestations emerge through the moving towards and away from his own understanding. Registering meaning on and through the paper, Bell often applies oil to the surface in order to ease the friction between the meeting of pencil and paper; a preparatory methodology that makes room for transparencies and tonal shifts, destabilising the autonomy of the plane and ambiguating the imagery it fosters. A profoundly meditative process, borne of the negotiation of fine controlled mark making and looser, impairing gestures, Bell’s drawings convey a sense of revelation and apparition, approaching the medium as means to substantiate or materialise the matter of thought.

Alongside his framed drawings, Day Anatomy includes eleven sculptural elements clustered throughout the gallery floorspace. Glass vessels, each assuming a various form spanning from novelty animal to artisan geometry, hold a yellow-hued liquid produced through an alchemical leaching process that reclaims the gold plating from wristwatch casings. Sourcing both glass vessel and metallic parts via online resellers, Bell’s process of stripping and dissolution evokes the destiny of possessions, bodies and matter–an inevitability of decay and energy transfer. Visually the works make reference to discarded bottles of urine on roadsides witnessed by the artist, an observation of competing abject and attractive formalist qualities, described by the artist as appearing as readymade colour-field paintings. Bell’s careful imitation is now both aligned and at odds with the conditions of the white cube gallery, wherein a commodified, elegant understanding is at once imparted onto and repelled by the work.

British cultural critic and novelist Michael Bracewell has written the catalogue essay The Art of Gavin Bell for the exhibition at Sutton Gallery.

“For a viewer encountering Gavin Bell’s finely detailed, densely worked art for the first time, in which shadowy figures and seemingly psychic cloudscapes are conjured from meticulous, quasi-automatic mark-making, the predominant motif might be that of mountainous cumulus, at times ominous and storm dark, at others more resembling a supernova flare of celestial brightness.”
(Excerpt, Michael Bracewell, The Art of Gavin Bell, 2026.)

Read Michael Bracewell’s full catalogue essay

Request catalogue

Artist biography

Gavin Bell (b. 1985, Melbourne, VIC) lives and works in London, UK. After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, Bell worked in collaboration with Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn as a part of the artist group Greatest Hits (2008–). Bell has exhibited widely across Australia, New Zealand, United States of America, and Europe, and examples of his collaborative work have been shown in the important institutional group exhibitions including NEW 11, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, 2011; Reinventing the Wheel: the Readymade Century, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, 2013; Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2014; Lurid Beauty, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2015; Octopus 16: Antiques Roadshow, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2016. Along with de Kuijer and McGlinn, Bell was a Gertrude Contemporary Studio Resident (2017–2019), following which he received the prestigious Stonehouse / Glasshouse residency in Chenaud, France (2022). Works are held within the public collections of The National Gallery of Victoria, Monash University Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Ballarat, and private collections internationally. In 2025, Bell presented the solo exhibition Day Anatomy at Mackintosh Lane, London.

Gavin Bell

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

, 2025
Gold dissolved from plated wristwatches, leeching agent, water, glass
Dimensions variable

Gavin Bell

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

, 2025
Pencil, paper, glassine, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
50 x 65cm (framed)

Installation view
Gavin Bell
Day Anatomy, 2026
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Photography Andrew Curtis

Gavin Bell

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

, 2025
Pencil, paper, oil, acrylic frame, screws
40 x 50cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Untitled (Day Anatomy), 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, paper, oil, acrylic frame, screws
40 x 50cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Gavin Bell

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

, 2025
Pencil, paper, oil, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
40 x 50cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Untitled (Day Anatomy), 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, paper, oil, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
40 x 50cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Installation view
Gavin Bell
Day Anatomy, 2026
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Photography Andrew Curtis

Gavin Bell

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

, 2025
Gold dissolved from plated wristwatches, leeching agent, water, glass
Dimensions variable

Gavin Bell

Love and pity

, 2025
Paper, oil, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
51.5 x 76cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Love and pity, 2025 (artwork detail)
Paper, oil, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
51.5 x 76cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Installation view
Gavin Bell
Day Anatomy, 2026
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Photography Andrew Curtis

Gavin Bell

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

, 2025
Gold dissolved from plated wristwatches, leeching agent, water, glass
Dimensions variable

Gavin Bell

Event, Spit remembers moon

, 2025
Pencil, conte, paper, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
65 x 50cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Event, Spit remembers moon, 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, conte, paper, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
65 x 50cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Gavin Bell

Event, Event

, 2025
Pencil, paper, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
65 x 50cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Event, Event, 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, paper, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
65 x 50cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Installation view
Gavin Bell
Day Anatomy, 2026
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Photography Andrew Curtis

Gavin Bell

Event (in gun metal light)

, 2025
Pencil, paper, oil, acrylic frame, screws
50 x 65cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Event (in gun metal light), 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, paper, oil, acrylic frame, screws
50 x 65cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Gavin Bell

Cloud, frame

, 2025
Pencil, paper, oil, plastic, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
50 x 65cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Cloud, frame, 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, paper, oil, plastic, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
50 x 65cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Installation view
Gavin Bell
Day Anatomy, 2026
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Photography Andrew Curtis

Gavin Bell

Mint day seen and unseen

, 2025
Pencil, paper, oil, plastic, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
41 x 56.5cm (framed)

Gavin Bell
Mint day seen and unseen, 2025 (artwork detail)
Pencil, paper, oil, plastic, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
41 x 56.5cm (framed)
Photography Corey Bartle-Sanderson

Gavin Bell

Night Sun

, 2025
Pencil, paper, oil, found mountboard, acrylic frame, screws
41 x 56.5cm (framed)

Gavin Bell Day Anatomy

Artist biography

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

Love and pity

Untitled (Day Anatomy)

Event, Spit remembers moon

Event, Event

Event (in gun metal light)

Cloud, frame

Mint day seen and unseen

Night Sun

Enquire

Subscribe