Slime Mother is a multi-sensory solo exhibition by artist and writer Abi Palmer.
This immersive exploration of care and attention centres on a sticky, slimy and much maligned mollusc – the slug. By monumentalising slug-life, Abi Palmer creates a space of resistance and embraces alternative ways of moving through, communing with, and inhabiting a world where the marginalised fight to survive.
Slime Mother brings together film, text, sculpture, and installation to explore the intersections of sick bodies, viscous textures and fragile ecologies. It invites us into an alternate universe in which slugs are revered – crip, queer, more-than-human beings who re-imagine how we might navigate precarious environments.
Through slime, the politics of space and deeply erotic alien mating rituals, Slime Mother invites us to be more slug-like – to slow down, to merge and connect – embracing the resilient strangeness of this complex gastropod.
Slime Mother has been commissioned by Chapter Arts Centre in partnership with Site Gallery. The exhibition was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Free Entry
Access Information
We run a Relaxed Visiting Hour between 11am – 12pm every Thursday. These hours provide brighter natural lighting and quieter sound.
We also run a Masked Visiting Hour between 11am – 12pm every Tuesday. These provide a safer experience for immunocompromised visitors, and we ask visitors to wear a face covering while in the exhibition during this time.
Children’s and adult’s ear defenders are available by the main gallery door. Hearing loops are available at reception.
Large-print versions of the exhibition handout and coloured overlays are available by the gallery door.
Slime Mother is in Site Gallery’s main exhibition space, on the ground floor. There are accessible, gender-neutral toilets and baby changing facilities on the same floor. Full access information will be provided closer to the exhibition opening.
Image: courtesy of Abi Palmer.
Artists
Abi Palmer
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.