artist profile
Gelbell is the collaborative practice of Australian artists Angelica Wootton and Isabella Greene.
Working simultaneously on the same canvas, the Melbourne-based duo has developed a singular painting language that develops through a shared and intuitive process. Painting together from beginning to end, each artist responds instinctively to the marks, gestures and decisions of the other. There is no predetermined composition, no fixed division of labour and no hierarchy between artists. Instead, the work emerges through a process of continual exchange, with painting operating as a form of conversation that unfolds in real time.
The figure sits at the centre of Gelbell’s practice. Drawn from observation, memory and the visual residue of everyday life, their women exist somewhere between portrait, archetype and caricature. A slouched shoulder, oversized boot, dangling cigarette or familiar posture become a shorthand for humour, character and recognition. The figures are deliberately unidealised. Rather than pursuing conventional notions of beauty, Gelbell is interested in the peculiarities, gestures and imperfections that make people distinctly themselves.
Physicality is fundamental to the work. Paint is layered, scraped away and rebuilt through an intuitive process that often involves hands, feet, rags, sticks and found objects as readily as brushes. Canvases are frequently worked on horizontally, allowing the artists to move around and across the surface as the painting develops. The resulting works retain evidence of their making: interruptions, revisions, gestures and traces embedded within the paint.
The artists often describe their process as “one brain with four arms” - a reflection of the intuitive understanding that has developed through years of working together. Over time, Gelbell has built an unspoken visual vocabulary, allowing each artist to anticipate and respond to the other without the need for fixed roles or prescribed methods. The collaboration is not simply the premise of the practice; it is the practice itself.
Both artists came to painting through design; Wootton through interiors and Greene through furniture. An understanding of proportion, materiality, composition and space continues to inform the work, while the paintings themselves have evolved through experimentation, repetition and an instinctive process of making together. This relationship between design and painting contributes to the balance within the work: considered composition held against spontaneity, structure against gesture.
Fashion and contemporary culture appear throughout the work as fragments rather than subjects. These recurring details place the figures within a recognisable world while leaving them deliberately open-ended. The paintings move between humour and tenderness, observation and invention, inviting viewers to recognise something of themselves within the scenes depicted.
Place also plays an important role within the practice. Working along the Victorian coast and in temporary studios abroad, the artists respond to shifts in atmosphere, pace and environment. Locations including Amsterdam and Ibiza have informed the conditions of making, while the underlying process remains constant.
Established in 2020, Gelbell has exhibited throughout Australia and Europe, with exhibitions consistently attracting strong audiences. Their work is held in private collections across Australia, Europe, the United States, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom, and has been featured in RUSSH, Vogue Living, The Local Project, The Design Files, InStyle Australia and White Ibiza.
At its core, Gelbell’s practice is an exploration of shared authorship. The paintings record two artists working in close proximity, building a visual language that belongs to neither individually yet could not exist without both. Through physical surfaces and figures drawn from everyday observation, Gelbell gives the ordinary a new physical and emotional presence.