An early career in nursing then designing to decorating has influenced Billie’s realistic and sometimes colourful figurative representations. Her dramatic career change from decorator to sculptor came about following a spinal injury in 2009 at the age of 44 that forced her off her ladders to the terra firma of the academic institutions to gain much-needed and wanted qualifications to teach an art-related subject. Billie now lectures sculptural processes and teaches private sculpting classes as well as creating her own work and commissioned projects.
Her work has won awards such as the Pure Arts Sculpture Award with the work being exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, and then later becoming part of the Birth Rights Collection. A bas-relief sculpture of her daughter was selected for the Society of Portrait Sculptors Annual exhibition in 2014. She also has work in private as well as public collections. Billie was also commissioned to create a character portrait of Lionel Richie for Alan Carr’s Chatty Man. Lionel is now the proud owner of the infamous object.
Using the traditional skills of realistic portrait sculpture as a point of departure, Billie explores representations of the self through a process of making, destroying and repairing as a metaphorical journey of trauma and healing – the scars of life – a way of trying to make sense of what it is to be human. Her work aims to connect in an emotive way with the viewer.
Her current exhibition of self-portrait sculpture takes us away from the everyday social media selfie ‘mask’, away from the celebrity pout to an honest and frank depiction of inner turmoil, trauma and the fight for internal calmness and a sense of wellbeing.
The work is a culmination of academic research and sculptural practice following Billie Bond’s recent completion of an MA at The Minories in Colchester and a research internship at the internationally renowned Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
For more information on Billie’s exhibition at the Gallery in the Garden, click here.
Gallery in the Garden 