There are exhibitions that announce themselves loudly with certainty and spectacle and then there are those that quietly draw you in. Carolina Aguirre’s site-specific installation It murmurs surely belongs to the latter category. Entering Palmer Gallery – housed within the former industrial building of the Palmer Tyre Company – to me feels less like stepping into a white cube but more like entering a dimly lit subterranean dream-like world: part cave, part shadow theatre, part ritual site.
At the centre of the exhibition stands a group of grey columnar sculptures titled It Murmurs (2026). Positioned on the concrete floor against a sharply illuminated screen, radiating a cold, almost technological glow, they recall a calcified forest. Inspired by nursing logs (decaying trees that support new growth within forest environments) the totem-like sculptures appear at once ancient and futuristic. They bring to mind landscapes shaped by volcanic eruption and recall natural disasters, where destruction and renewal exist side by side.
The sculptures form a striking contrast to the large painting Move On (2026) close by. Here, layers of sumi ink, shellac, organic pigments and gofun, a traditional Japanese white pigment made from pulverised oyster shells, softly blend across wooden panels. At first the work appears abstract, merely composed of washes of muted greys and browns, but on closer inspection fleeting imprints of the artist’s own body emerge. Aguirre creates these paintings through a performative process, directly moving with her body over the wooden panels on the floor of her studio.
Born in Chile, raised in Argentina and now living in London, Aguirre often reflects on memory, migration and belonging through her relationship with land and nature. Rather than illustrating these themes directly, she allows them to emerge through the natural materials she is using. Cuts made by the artist into the wooden surface of paintings like Move On resemble scars, while traces of her limbs appear and disappear across the surface that is made of minerals that erode over time, perhaps questioning the idea of a fixed identity whilst being present in different cultural landscapes at the same time.
Notions of life and death also move into sharp focus in the single-channel video work I’ve Got You (2026). In contrast to the organic forms of the sculptures and fleeting nature of the paintings, the outlook of the film, that combines text with imagery of the artists face and natural vistas, appears minimalistic. We hear the artist reading a script on autocue, being in a direct conversation with death. As the text scrolls down, typed words gradually disappear until only the essential message remains: a reflection on mortality, resilience and sentiment that endures across time.
Tucked away in a small adjacent room with an almost chapel-like atmosphere hangs the triptych Family Portrait (2026). These human-scale monochrome grey panels at first resemble large X-ray images of body parts. Here, imprints of the artist’s body, on display in the middle, are flanked by traces of her parents’ bodies on the left and right, again prompting thoughts of birth and transformation.
Created in close dialogue with the architecture and history of Palmer Gallery, It murmurs feels deeply connected to its setting. A former industrial site built in the 1920s that has undergone its own transformation over the past century, from producing aircraft parts in WWII to a creative hub today, the exhibition space provides a fitting backdrop for Aguirre’s reflections on change, renewal and the passage of time. Also, the title of the show ‘It murmurs’ is apt: Nothing here shouts for attention. Instead, her poetic, at times melancholic oeuvre unfolds slowly, rewarding careful looking and quiet contemplation.
A live performance by Alkanna Greaca, a vocal trio blending raw folk traditions from the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Black Sea with free improvisation and expansive soundscapes will take place in Carolina Aguirre’s installation on Friday 5 June at 2 pm. The event will mark the launch of the Lisson Grove Galleries initiative during Gallery weekend, a collaborative programme of events hosted between Palmer Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Bomb Factory, Patrick Heide Gallery and The Showroom, London.
