February 28, 2025

To celebrate the first anniversary of the gallery, Palmer Gallery is launching The Door, a new programme hosted in the annexed space at the back of the gallery. Functioning as a pseudo-project space, The Door is dedicated to supporting artists who work in less commercially-driven practices, offering them a platform to create immersive, experimental, and conceptual environments. This new initiative will feature a series of solo exhibitions running alongside the main gallery programme but with a sharper focus on experimentation, worldbuilding, and sensory engagement.

Each presentation will showcase artists whose practices emphasize multi-sensory installations, site-specific work, and the transformation of space into immersive and thought-provoking environments. The name The Door is drawn from a poem by the Czech modernist Miroslav Holub. The poem is about stimulating intellectual curiosity through endeavour, while feeling and responding to reality through an appreciation of the present. It encourages readers to embrace change and uncertainty by stepping into the unknown, suggesting that even the act of opening a door can lead to discovery, renewal, and possibility. The name also highlights the physical partition between the main gallery and The Door space, serving as a gateway into the artist’s world - a portal that can be shaped and reimagined with each new presentation.

The programme launches on 6 March with a solo presentation by Daria Blum, a performance artist and Royal Academy Schools alumna.