Hannah Kate Absalom (b.1998) is originally from Northumberland and has studied Fine Art BA (Hons) at The Glasgow School of Art, The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and is currently based in London studying an MFA at Central Saint Martins.

Absalom’s practice is a surreal, camp and grotesque reflection on her identity as a queer, working class woman with a deep seated interest in Judeo-Christo iconography and the horror genre.

Through the mediums of oil-painting, moving-image and installation, the artist blends the sacred, the medieval and Science-Fiction, lending from the camp and overly-saturated graphics of classic horror and Sci-Fi. Absalom approaches the flesh as a site of bodily horror, comedic relief and intimacy, placing equal value on each factor. The queer body becomes the uncanny within the work of the artist; the domestic is challenged and the homely is transmogrified into the unheimlich.

Within surreal, fictional worlds, characters and motifs drift from one work to another, like the merging and blurring boundaries of narratives and imagery within dreams. Absalom queers landscapes and characters to concoct an image both camp and macabre; the imagery used can often be unsettling, disturbing and hypnotic in its blending of dream and dogma.

The painterly and the cinematic meet in Absalom’s moving-image work which imitates the style of German Expressionism, leaning into the Lo-Fi and humorously exploiting the limits of her methods of video-making. The artist does not intend to make works entirely independent of one another, but rather, through an act of fictioning, to create spaces, sites of ritual and mysticism in which artworks and their means of display melt off the gallery walls and become semi-sculptural, installational works within theatrical and cinematic sets.

Statement / Exhibitions

SOLO SHOWS:

(2022)

/ MIASMA /, WASPS South Block, Glasgow, UK.

/ HYPNAGOGIA /, Tchai Ovna, Glasgow, UK

(2019)

/ IN A DRY AND WEARY LAND, WHERE THERE IS NO WATER / Imbala Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel.

GROUP SHOWS:

(2023)

From Narrow Lines to Galactic Farts: A Tale of Guts, Pots, Turtles, Maggots and Migraine Whims - Five Years Gallery, London, UK.

/ FLESH, TIDE, GHOST / - 9-15 Elthorne Rd, London, UK.

Into the Abject - The Haggerston, London, UK.

All Things Current Are Found - Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, UK.

How to Prevent an Existential Crisis - GaleriE106, London, UK.

(2022)

Dirty Secrets - Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield, UK.

(2021)

The Alternative Degree Show - The Briggait, Glasgow, UK.

Aire Place Studios, Leeds, UK.

Open Cut, The Wunderkammer Project - The Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK.

(2020)

Across the Sea - New Glasgow Society, Glasgow, UK.

Ten Past Six - Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow, UK.

The Pieces are in Flux - Saltspace Gallery, Glasgow, UK.

(2019)

SOUP - Glue Factory, Glasgow, UK.

Across the Sea - The Pratt Institute, New York, USA.

(2018)

Invisible Threads are the Strongest Ties - Many Studios, Glasgow, UK.

Trust in Lanslation - Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem, Israel.

AWARDS, RESIDENCIES AND EDUCATION:

(2022-2024)

Mona Hatoum Foundation Bursary, London, UK.

MFA, Fine Art, Central Saint Martins, London, UK

(2016-2020)

First Class BA (Hons) Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK.

RUK Scholarship, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK.

(2018-2019)

Erasmus Exchange, The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel.

OTHER:

(2022)

Interviewed and artwork published in UP Magazine, New York, USA.

(2021)

Films screened at Interlude Film Festival, SWG3 and ISO Design, Glasgow, UK.

(2020)

Films screened at and interviewed by Birkenhead Film Festival, UK.

Artwork published in Penny Thoughts, From Glasgow to Saturn, MASS, and Artists Responding To.