News

Autumn-Winter 2024

A Shared Wetness at Slime Mother, Chapter 2024. Image credit: Dan Weil

Greetings, Friends

As the seasons change and the days get darker, I find myself slowing down again. It happens every year and yet it always surprises me, the sudden change of speed. Like I’m suddenly underwater, or like gravity has hit me that little bit too hard. 

This year I learned that one of the reasons people with arthritis get heavy this time of year is to do with barometric pressure. The air pressure drops, and so the sky isn’t squeezing quite as hard. The theory goes that because the sky has stopped squeezing, my synovial fluid has more room to expand and thicken, weighing me down, pulling me back to earth. I also experience a lot of brain fog and have started to wonder: is the fluid in my brain expanding too? Is the fog less metaphorical and more literal after all?

In 2023 I completed a film series in collaboration with my cats called Abi Palmer Invents the Weather, (commissioned by Artangel). I spent an entire year explaining the outside weather to my indoor cats, making sense of my relationship with an outside world that isn’t always kind to my body. The biggest thing I learned from the project was to trust my body to move with the seasons, to allow myself room to draw in and hibernate over the winter, knowing that I will be re-emerging again in spring, when the sun and the air pressure make me whole again.

You can watch all 4 episodes of Abi Palmer Invents the Weather here

A Year In Slime

Last winter, my hibernation project was a book called Slugs: A Manifesto, which now exists in the world!! Actually it has sold out almost everywhere…

I wrote the manifesto alongside a commission from Chapter, Cardiff, to develop my first solo exhibition, Slime Mother. Spanning five rooms of film, sculpture, textile art, stained glass and one interactive slime fountain, the exhibition explores what it means to be sluglike - to be a marginalised body who feels unwelcome in certain spaces, to need rest, to be disgusting. The exhibition culminates in a giant slug disco, a massive orgy of copulating leopard slugs, with a sexy sexy soundtrack of all my favourite cheesy crooners. 

If you missed the show, you can catch a live tour, an audio description and a Spotify playlist here. Next year, the exhibition will also tour to Site Gallery, Sheffield, so watch this space!!

An Online Shop!!

HALLOWEEN SALE: get 10% off on all purchases instore with discount code FRIENDOFGHOST. Expires 5 November 23:59GMT

Just in time for Spooky Season, I’ve finally launched my online shop! Get your hands on Slime Mother hats and signed, illustrated copies of Slugs: A Manifesto. I’m also revisiting GHOST DRESS, a print series of ha:unted dresses exploring the sensation of Out-Of-Body Experience, described in my first book Sanatorium. Learn a bit about the project below

Residency, Rhythm and Research

Since working on Abi Palmer Invents the Weather, I’ve made more of an effort to structure my artistic practice around what I’ve learned about my seasonal fluctuation.. This season I’m doing a residency with Wysing Arts Centre. I’m taking a few short trips to Wysing itself, to share ideas with friends around bonfires, but mainly I’ve been using the time to research and rebuild. I’ve begun a new writing project, a novel, which needs time and space to stretch and unfold around. Knowing that the outcome is unfixed, that there’s nobody to answer to if I don’t finish it, if I just lie in bed and drink hot chocolate instead, feels terrifying but also very freeing. To move into a fictional space means telling a different kind of truth, with a different kind of end point. 

The other half of my residency is very research led. This year  Abi Palmer Invents the Weather was exhibited at Crip Arte Spazio, a celebration of the Disability Arts Movement at Venice Biennale. It has been incredibly moving to spend more time exploring the history of the Disability Arts Movement, but I also found myself reflecting on the current period in disability arts  I found myself I’ve also found myself reflecting on the current desperate to spend time with the work of other disabled artists and writers, and I’ve been having a really nice time just getting reacquainted with the work of my community.  

Here are some things I’ve read,  watched and seen recently 

Art

I really enjoyed Djofray Makumbu’s presentation with Bolanle Contemporary at Minor Attractions during Frieze week this year. His new exhibition Snap! is on at Space Ilford until 19 March 2025.

I’ve also been making friends with a new studio mate, Tess Connell, who makes really gorgeous paintings about hands, all titled after some of the absolutely horrifying ableist things people have said to her. They are witty, playful and easy to lose yourself in. You can see Tess’ work on instagram.

TV

I have never seen the complexity and strange, shifting boundaries of care explored on TV before, let alone in as funny and nuanced a piece of television as We Might Regret This. An absolute must-watch,

Books

After falling in love with the sensory, luxurious presentation of Finland’s disability-led pavilion at Venice Bienalle this year, I have been reading their beautiful accompanying collection The Pleaures We Choose. You can read it for free here.

Film

It’s been great to see Ames Pennington’s new film TOPS do so well on the international stage this year! A playful, weird documentary set out like a 90s tv show, the film asks the simple question “What top did you wear after top surgery?” Everyone should see it.

I’m really excited to announce the launch of my new project Abi Palmer Invents the Weather in collaboration with my two cats Lola-Lola and Cha-U-Kao. Commissioned by Artangel, the 4 short films will be released online over March.

I’m also doing a weekly accompanying online talk show / afterparty called The Weather with some very special guests. For more info and to book your tickets, click here.