"Although her interest in art was nurtured as a student, Bella Bonner-Evans says she carved out her gallery career on her own. She currently works as a co-curator and head of sales at the Notting Hill gallery Studio West. “The art world is an incredibly elitist and exclusionary place, something I became intensely aware of as I attempted to get my first real gallery job,” Bonner-Evans says.
After graduating from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2021, Bonner-Evans sent off hundreds of applications but received almost no responses. “At the time, I didn’t realise how rife nepotism is in the industry; I was incredibly disheartened and felt entirely inadequate,” she says. In many ways this prepared her “for the art world’s ‘pay to play’ mentality”, forcing her to be “inventive and resilient”.
Bonner-Evans began working in arts PR and freelancing as a writer. Talking about class is counterintuitive to the art world, she thinks, “because it is not designed for those from working-class backgrounds or those who have little capital”. She adds: “Money itself is almost taboo, with prices being kept secret on the assumption that, if you were to be a collector lucky enough to be allocated a work from a major gallery’s show, the question of whether you can afford it wouldn’t even cross your mind.”
