Descent to Kilgrimol Rx

23 JUNE – 2 JULY (STRICTLY BY APPOINTMENT)

‘Descent to Kilgrimol Rx’ is an exhibition of new paintings, publication and performance by Belladonna Paloma, made during the 2022 Work/Leisure residency programme.

The exhibition explores grief rituals such as the Gaelic tradition of keening women, the German folk figure of the Geldscheisser (Gold Shitter), tarot and Blackpool’s own history of fortune-tellers, as well as a local legend around the disappearance of Kilgrimol.

The legend of Kilgrimol describes the disappearance of the chapel and graveyard that stood at the boundary of Lytham St Annes up until the 12th century, telling of how the earth opened up and swallowed the place whole.

The exhibition builds upon this legend – reimagining the graveyard and its inhabitants as still existing in a mythological underground, Kilgrimol Rx – a resting place for The Outcast Dead. To aid in this descent to Kilgrimol Rx, Bella casts Cool Spot, the titular character from the 1993 Sega MegaDrive platform game, as psychopomp.

The opening night will have a performance/ritual at 7pm by Bella.

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BELLADONNA PALOMA_DESCENT TO KILGRIMOL Rx_2022_INSTALLATION IMAGES

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Belladonna Paloma is an artist, poet & witch living on a remote croft in the Shetland Islands, UK. She paints, tattoos, writes poetry, and makes computer games. Her work is into listening to faeries, how divination disturbs linear time, grief rituals, toilets and necromancy. Bella makes art as acts of devotion. This devotion has most recently centred on Shetland’s boglands, and wetlands more generally, continuing her interest in the politics and mysticism of what we choose to call ‘waste’. Her work has been published and exhibited by: The Overkill Festival, Netherlands, in collaboration with Uma Breakdown (2023), IMT Gallery, London (2023), Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, collaboration with Rabindranath Bhose and Oren Shoesmith (2023), Vital Capacities (2023), Sluice Magazine (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art, London (2023), TISSUEPAPER Magazine (2023), AMBIT (2023), Gropius Bau, Berlin, collaboration with Daniella Valz Gen (2023), Gaada, Shetland (2023), Sticky Fingers Publishing (2023), Art Licks (2022), Two Queens, Leicester (2022), Abingdon Studios Project Space, Blackpool (2022), Cariboo Projects, Bristol (2021), Supernormal Festival, Oxfordshire (2019), and Arnolfini, Bristol (2017).

From 2014-2019 Belladonna co-edited the artist-led journal, Doggerland (with Tom Prater).

You can find out more about Bella’s practice here: https://cavendishgroup.hotglue.me/