Bella Milroy

Congratulations 24/25 Wysing Residency alum Bella Milroy, who has been appointed to the AHRC Midlands4Cities Collaborative Doctoral Award, ‘Centering the Rural: Organisational Identities, Public Engagement and Curatorial Practice at Wysing Arts Centre, 1989 to today’. 

Bella Milroy is an artist and curator who works with sculpture, drawing, photography, text, and gardening. Their practice considers the ways we make contact with the world around us through reflections about labour, rest and making as a disabled person.

During the PhD, Bella will work across Wysing, the University of Leicester and Birmingham City University, supervised by Dr Rosemary Shirley, Professor Becky Shaw and Wysing’s curatorial team. 

Bella said “I truly believe in the power of rural and disabled art and culture in how they can offer unique insights into ways of making, collaborating and being with art and with one another.

I think rural and disabled art and culture is vital to how we can understand art, both historic and contemporary, and I am excited by the opportunity to explore these concepts using Wysing as a case study. I can't wait to connect with the work of others in the field, expand upon existing work and offer new insights into this important area of research.

I feel incredibly lucky to have this opportunity, and I can't wait to get started!” 

Bella Milroy lives and works in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Recent projects include The Possibility of Being, Vital Capacities, online (2024); 30/30, Artquest, online (2024); Further Afield, Level Centre, Rowsley (2024); and From the Ground Up, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2022). Their upcoming exhibition Languages of Intimacy, which has been created in collaboration with Khairani Barokka, will open at Grand Union, Birmingham in autumn 2025.