A highly-educated and prolific artist, Christine Bell-Pearson
holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in painting and ceramics from
the University of York (UK), a Masters of Fine Art from the
University of Leicester (UK) and a Graduate Diploma in Art History
from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. She has
studied ceramics at the Royal College of Art in Antibes, France and
is currently working towards her Doctorate in Visual Arts at
Charles Sturt University, NSW Australia.
A renowned ceramicist and painter, Bell-Pearson produces work
across a range of different media, often inserting photographic
representations of her ceramic and pottery works into mixed media
works on canvas as a self-referential comment on the nature of
artistic production and the history of culture. Hints of the
museological and archaeological abound in her work and her use of
text in multiple languages (including French, German, Greek,
mathematical formulae and chemical equations) serves to illuminate
the many and varied ways in which truth can be
discovered, examined and related.
According to Bell-Pearson, 'ceramics as markers of history and
the land as container of vessels are of particular interest in the
light of New Zealand's history. The gendered visual language of
ceramics is of concern within the work as is the dichotomy between
visual and verbal.'
Bell-Pearson has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in
Singapore, France, New York, London, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt,
Australia and New Zealand and her work is held in public and
private collections both in New Zealand and internationally. As
well as her exhibited work, Bell-Pearson has produced commissions
for such notable clients as the National Bank, Otago University,
and Fletcher Challenge. On behalf of the New Zealand Government,
Bell-Pearson's work was presented as a gift to foreign dignitaries
including the Prime Minister of France.