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 BIOGRAPHY & STATEMENT
The cannibalistic regurgitation of autofictional memories and narratives lies at the heart of Absalom’s practice. Text, painting, sculpture and moving-image are reprocessed and churned back into one another; sites and figures of worship, sex, grief and the in-between find themselves oozing and seeping from film, to painting, reaching for the intersection of ritual, horror and queerness.
Following the concept of Gersamtkunstwerk, the artist creates installational sites of ritual and mysticism which activate multiple senses. Blending the sacred and the otherworldly, Absalom approaches the flesh as a site of bodily horror and intimacy. The artist’s current body of work (2023-cont.) The New and Old Order of Newlyth Sacellum amalgams coastal folklore with a self-made queer utopia, coupling concrete, chains, wet pink, wound red and oozing black.
The individual works are not only objects, but relics and oft times living creatures of a transmogrified dimension. Installations act as portals which may be activated at any moment
Notable exhibitions include; Blind Faith (The Bath House, London), A Year Spent Grieving (Hypha, London), But We Could Be Dining Anywhere, (Farsight Gallery, London), METAHORROR (The Good Rice, London), Dinner with the Phlambards (Riposte, Electrowerkz, London), and Wunderkammer (Transmission Gallery, Glasgow).
In 2026, Absalom was awarded the Auto Amor Residency, and in 2025 both the Pink Collar Gallery commission and culminating exhibition and the Working Class Creatives Database x Acrylicize residency and exhibition. In 2024 Absalom was the recipient of the Cass Art Graduate Award and the Mona Hatoum Foundation Bursary. Their publications were exhibited at Tate Modern in 2024 and 2025. Alongside their individual practice, they are also part of the artist collective This Cruel Temple.
SOLO SHOWS:
(2027) upcoming
/ BLEEING TABLE /, South London Gallery, London, UK.
(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:
(2026)
Blind Faith, The Bath House, London, UK.
(2025)
The Art Swap II, Auto Amor x The Art House, London, UK
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:
(2026)
Sculpture selected for the Blind Faith Archive.
Awarded the Auto Amor Residency, Kent, UK.
(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.
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.