Badimia Yamatji and Yued Noongar artist Amanda Bell first started making art in 2017 while working as a full-time carer for her elderly mother. During this time of intense isolation, art became an important outlet and avenue for her to explore and connect with her cultural and familial heritage. Bell has since developed an expansive, experimental practice rooted in her interests in language and its enduring powers, and in exploring new ways of telling stories – through poetry, written word and imagery, together with sculpture, sound and installation.  

Bell’s new commission Five ways to make a rainbow is the third Judy Wheeler Commission, an annual series of site-specific works that respond to the history and site of PICA. Using sunlight, sound and language, Bell’s work for PICA addresses the building’s history, acknowledging its construction on unceded land, a moment marked by colonial dispossession and violence. As Bell says, ‘In some of that story there is darkness. I will use light and sound to allow visitors to sit in discomfort. To see, feel and listen to voices and stories that linger with us today.’ 

On display throughout 2025, Bell’s installation channels and directs the sun’s light through the windows of PICA’s stairwell deep into the building’s recesses. The shifting interplay of light, sound and language with the architecture creates a captivating yet unsettling atmosphere, urging visitors to engage with their surroundings and reflect on the layered histories of the spaces we inhabit – what Bell calls ‘the very collision of building and boodja.’