Hannah Kate Absalom (b.1998, Northumberland) is a multidisciplinary artist, predominantly working with painting, installation and text. Absalom holds an MAFA from Central Saint Martins (2022-24) and a Fine Art BA(Hons) from The Glasgow School of Art (2016-20).
ARTIST STATEMENT / EXHIBITIONS
Absalom lives in London and their practice is based in their Shadwell studio. In 2024 they received the Cass Art Graduate Award, and during their studies were awarded the Mona Hatoum Foundation Bursary. Absalom belongs to the artist collectives This Cruel Temple and FLESH TIDE GHOST.
Absalom’s practice utilises the uncanny and grotesque to investigate the intersections of religious iconography, horror and queerness. Taking a cannibalistic form, autofictional memories are reprocessed and churned out through multiple mediums; characters and writings find themselves oozing and seeping from film, to painting, both within the artist’s individual work and within their collective efforts. Environments and relics are queered, concocting an image both camp and macabre. The imagery used can often be unsettling, disturbing and hypnotic in its fluid blurring of dream and dogma.
Inspired by church architecture, and consequently by the practice of Gersamtkunstwerk, the artist creates installational sites of ritual and mysticism which activate multiple senses. Blending the sacred and the otherworldly, Absalom draws from Byzantine iconography, folklore, camp horror and Science Fiction to queer environments and approach the flesh as a site of bodily horror and intimacy.
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:
(2025)
Collective Pulse - Hills Art Centre, Sunderland, UK
A Year Spent Grieving - This Cruel Temple, Hypha HQ, London, UK
METAHORROR - This Cruel Temple, The Good Rice Gallery, London, UK
(2024)
But We Could Be Dining Anywhere - This Cruel Temple, Farsight Gallery, London, UK
Queer Time - Outsiders Gallery, London, UK
Tribute - Safehouse, London, UK
This Cruel Temple - Central Saint Martins MA Degree Show, London, UK.
The Phlambards Dine at Riposte - Riposte, Electrowerkz, London, UK.
For the Sick and the Poor - Hypermedia Events x Fourth Portal, St Andrew's Church, Gravesend, UK.
Unravel - Granary Square, London, UK.
Practice Event II - 9-15 Elthorne Road, London, UK.
Dinner with the Phlambards - 9-15 Elthorne Road, London, UK.
Doozy - Cafe Strangebrew, Bristol, UK.
Where You From - Peckham Safehouse, London, UK.
RUPTURE AND SPEW SOME ROTTEN THING THAT LOOKS LIKE YOU - 9-15 Elthorne Road, London, UK.
Practice Event I - 9-15 Elthorne Road, London, UK.
(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)
Art on a Postcard - Bomb Factory, Soho, London, UK.
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:
(2025)
Awarded the lead Pink Collar Gallery commission for the Collective Pulse exhibition.
(2024)
Working Class Creatives Database x Acrylicize Residency
(2022-2024)
The Cass Art Graduate Award, winner, 2024.
Mona Hatoum Foundation Bursary, London, UK.
Distinction MAFA, 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:
(2025)
Offprint - Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, publication Fictional Breakdowns I exhibited.
(2024)
Offprint - Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, publication The New and Old Order of Newlyth Sacellum exhibited.
Selected for and artwork sold with Blue Shop Galleries Works on Paper 6.
(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.