Art

Abi Palmer: Slime Mother

20 July–6 October 2024

Why be a slug? Abi Palmer’s debut solo exhibition created an alternate universe where, rather than treated with disgust, slugs are worshipped. Through slime, queerness, politics of space and deeply erotic, alien mating rituals, Slime Mother invited audiences to merge and connect with this complex gastropod, and embrace its resilient strangeness.

"I identify with the slug: I too have been regarded with repulsion, no more than a pest stealing spoils from the hardworking farmer. Once I allow myself space to move beyond visceral disgust and phobia, I find space for beauty, fascination and even a glistening reverence for a creature who became more disgusting as a means of survival"

—Abi Palmer

The exhibition was accompanied by Slugs: A Manifesto, a new publication by Palmer, published by Makina Books.

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About the artist

Abi Palmer is an artist and writer. She uses film, text, sculpture and sensory intervention to explore sick bodies, viscous textures and ecological landscapes.

Works include film series Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Artangel, 2023); book Sanatorium (Penned in the Margins, 2020); and interactive gambling arcade Crip Casino (exhibited at Tate Modern, Somerset House, Wellcome Collection and Collective Edinburgh.

Her copulating slug sculptures were selected for the Frieze Corridor Commission (2023). She is a Bloomberg New Contemporaries artist (2023); a recipient of Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Awards for Artists (2021) and Artangel’s Thinking Time award (2020). Sanatorium was shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.

This exhibition was supported by Henry Moore Foundation, Arts Council of Wales and Arts Council England.