Annabelle Edginton
I am partway through reading The Gospel of the Eels by Patrik Svensson, 2026

Telescopic clothing rail, monitor, pvc pipe, bike break, cord, stretch fleece, wood, LED lights, wire, acetate, paper, blender, distorting mirror, green screen, paper maché

The beginnings of this work can be traced to the nearby chatter of unintelligible software meetings, drifting through a domestic space shared with Annabelle’s partner Louis Glanfield. From a closeness to something not fully grasped, Annabelle became interested in uncertainty, slippages in language, translation and spaces where not-knowing becomes a point of departure.

Annabelle was first introduced to the European eel during a guided walk in Faversham with conservationist Matthew Hatchwell, followed by a screening of The Eel’s Tale by Sam Williams. The eel, shrouded in speculation, operates as a figure for states of partial knowledge. 

The installation includes a filmed performance-lecture co-hosted with Louis inside a 360° booth constructed by Annabelle from a preloved telescopic clothing rail. The lecture was made on a whim, initially disliked, yet reframed and re-performed through a transcription. Facts, myths and misrememberings wash through the conversation. A digital animation of an eel giving birth — an unseen event — becomes choreography interpreted through a puppet eel. Viewers are invited into an off kilter space: a “pat your head and rub your belly” experience, where navigation is intentionally awkward and fragmented. Meaning surfaces through repetition and misalignment, never settling, but continuously forming.

Annabelle Edginton builds systems, stories, and situations that explore dislocation, distance, and strange forms of connection. Processes in her work may half-work, overwork, or drift into the absurd, testing how things might function beyond natural law. Through a dyslexic lens, language loops, slips, and reroutes. Her works leak at the edges, with multiple entry points and no fixed ending.