Bella Easton
Echo Chamber & The Seeds of the Narcissi
February 5th - March 15th 2026
Echo Chamber & The Seeds of the Narcissi is a series of giant peep shows constructed from layered woodcut prints, cut and assembled into immersive internal environments. Unfolding as a spatial choreography of mirrored surfaces, printed veils, and sculptural cut-outs, the installation invites viewers to look through as well as at – navigating tunnel-like constructions that evoke inner landscapes shaped by memory, light, and distortion.
Composed of silk organza, woodcut on Japanese paper, and mirrored elements, these layered passages become shifting perceptual spaces where surface becomes portal and image becomes atmosphere. The oil pigment allows light to filter through the thin paper, so that images are seen from behind as well as within. Blurring the line between interior and exterior worlds, the work combines natural motifs with abstract geometry in a quiet dialogue of repetition, rupture, and spatial dissonance - creating a quiet interplay of reflection, fragmentation and reverie.
Drawing on the myth of Echo and Narcissus, the work explores themes of reflection, perception, and emotional resonance. Inspired by the idea of the echo as both repetition and distortion, Easton constructs immersive, tunnel-like spaces that echo the psychological dynamics of longing, memory, and self-regard. The “seeds of the narcissi” suggest both natural growth and mythic symbolism – inner landscapes taking root and multiplying within quiet, reflective chambers.
What returns is never the same. In the echo, we hear the shape of our own forgetting.
The works unfold like echoes or afterimages. Images fragment and reassemble. Light flickers across cut-out voids and mirrored doubles. Each layer reconfigures the last. Glimpses appear, disappear, and return, like thought, like breath.
Easton uses the grid as both structure and strategy – a trellis that contains and fractures. Within this framework, mirrored motifs and spatial tensions form images that feel at once familiar and estranged. They evoke domestic interiors – wallpaper, textiles, architectural detail – while slipping into something more uncanny and psychological.
These interior structures, at once decorative and disorienting, act as portals or chambers. As light seeps through them, surface becomes depth and image becomes atmosphere. The cut-away tunnels resemble architectural thresholds or stage sets – theatrical spaces where memory performs and perception wavers.
The installation is viewable from the street and includes a soundscape created by South-East London-based music producer, Max Wray, accessible via QR code (available below). This additional layer invites passersby and viewers to engage with the work both visually and sonically – extending the experience beyond the gallery space and reflecting Easton’s ongoing interest in printmaking as a spatial, material, and social practice.
Bella Easton is a London-based artist whose work explores internal space and spatial perception through expanded printmaking and constructed imagery. Working across woodcut, etching, and hybrid forms of relief, she builds large-scale installations from hand-printed fragments — layered, mirrored, and assembled into contemplative structures shaped by memory, light, and architectural rhythm.
She studied Painting at Winchester School of Art (BA, 1993) and completed her postgraduate training at the Royal Academy Schools (1997–2000), followed by a Printmaking Fellowship at City & Guilds of London Art School. Her work has been widely exhibited in the UK and internationally — including in Europe, Japan, India, and the US — and is held in public and private collections.
In 2024–25, Easton presented Everything Flows, a solo exhibition at Enia Gallery, Athens. She has been selected for the John Moores Painting Prize and exhibited with Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London. Recent awards include the Jerwood London Originals Print Prize (Royal Academy, 2019) and the Cass Art Prize for Art Educators (2025).
