30 May - 28 June 2026

The much-anticipated solo exhibition by Lido Open 2025 winner Laura L Bell features a collection of paintings inspired by the inherent oddness and transience of life by the sea.

The exhibition centres on surreal still-life compositions in which objects drawn from the artist’s memories and dreams appear within twilight landscapes and drifting white fogs. Influenced by Walter Sickert’s Brighton Pierrots and her own upbringing in the seaside town of Scarborough, Bell reflects on the quiet melancholy of places built for leisure yet uneasily positioned at the edge of an unknowable horizon.

At the heart of the show is A black cloud held lightly, a painting that gathers bricks, a chair, a conical hat, a house, and kitchen paraphernalia  – and a black cloud that refuses to behave like a cloud at all. Solid rather than vaporous, it sits on the ground as an object amongst the clutter. Throughout Bell’s work the black cloud shifts in scale and presence, at times small and almost playful, at others expanding to dominate the canvas, the cloud obscures, consumes and conceals, transforming into white fog that erases the surface of the painting itself.

Across the exhibition, Bell uses scale, placement and colour to create still-life arrangements within open landscapes, allowing relationships between disparate objects to unfold. Her twilight skies hold the work in a suspended state – between day and night, memory and observation, the conscious and the subconscious.

Sickert’s Brighton Pierrots serves as a touchstone throughout. Its depiction of a temporary seaside stage, fading daylight and end-of-season atmosphere resonates with Bell’s own experience working in a seafront theatre box office as a teenager. The sense of performance, impermanence and quiet disorientation that defines many coastal towns runs through the exhibition, shaping a body of work that is both intimate and unsettling.

Born in 1987 on the North-East coast of England in Scarborough, Laura L Bell lives and works in London, UK. She studied BA Art Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London (UK), graduating in 2010, and recently studied at Turps Art School in London as part of the Off-site Programme (2023-25). Recent exhibitions include Light Clutter, Finch Gallery, London (solo, 2026), Blink, Safehouse, London (group, 2026) and The Lido Open 2025, Lido Stores (group, 2025). Bell’s Lido Open 2025 entry was chosen as the winning painting from 1,800 submissions by guest judge Sophie von Hellermann and Lido Stores owner-curator Kristen Healy.

To request early access to the works list please email Kristen at thelidostores@gmail.com