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Bio
Abi Palmer is an artist, writer and filmmaker exploring the relationship between linguistic and physical communication. Key work includes Crip Casino—an interactive gambling arcade parodying the wellness industry and institutionalised spaces -shown at Tate Modern, Somerset House and Wellcome Collection (2018-20)—and Sanatorium—a fragmented memoir that jumps between a luxury thermal pool and a blue inflatable bathtub (Penned in the Margins, 2020). Personal essays and articles have been published by The Guardian, Vice and Wellcome Collection Stories. In 2016 she won a Saboteur Award for her multisensory poetry installation Alchemy. In 2020 she was awarded a Artangel Thinking Time award in order to address the pandemic. She was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award For Artists in 2021. Abi can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @abipalmer_bot.
Sanatorium
"Exquisite... Sanatorium is a book about what it means to be alive" —Sinéad Gleeson
Sanatorium describes a young woman taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest. On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an £80 inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability; a trip hazard in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating and in constant danger of falling apart.
The book was launched during lockdown, live from her inflatable bathtub. During this period, Abi also began The Sanatorium Sessions: a series of informal discussions and performances featuring multidisciplinary artists and writers in their bathtubs.
Sanatorium was shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.
Collaboration
A key aspect of Abi’s work is collaboration: forming conversations between performer and participant, movement and language, and across a wide range of different disciplines. Abi's work has explored Philosophy of Science, Marine Biology, Contemporary Dance and Mineralogy. In 2016, she collaborated with mycologist and poet Nathan Smith to develop a series of new literary forms, 'Mycolyrica' based on the growing structures of fungi. In 2013, she worked with her brother, artist Ollie Palmer, to develop ‘Nybble:’ an installation that transformed contemporary dancers into a human computer, at the V&A Museum, London.
In 2015, Abi co-founded The SHINDIG Collective with curator Wesley Freeman-Smith, a year-long project to develop risk-taking conversations between a team of scientists, artists, dancers, film makers, poets and musicians. Experimental salons and participatory scratch nights followed, including the geometrically-influenced 'Dancing in Code', and immersive ‘choose-your-own-narrative’ event Tall Tales Labyrinth. The cut-up zine 'SHINPRINT #1' serves as a DIY manifesto for the project, celebrating influences from Dada, Fluxus and Oulipo movements in developing absurd, playful conversation between performer and participant.
