ABIGAIL JACQUELINE JONES
is an autistic, transfemme multidisciplinary visual artist, performer and writer, and an academic researcher with a particular interest in unconventional human sexualities and erotic divergence. Engaged in highly avant-garde, experimental, queer and transgressive forms of creative research, tangentially intersecting with the institutional academic establishment only where absolutely necessary, her practice twins live disciplines — such as cabaret, immersive theatre, and spoken-word — with the creation of DIY self-published artist’s books and zines, as well as the recording, archiving and dissemination of oral histories, ethnographies, and qualitative sexuality research. Informed by her own experiences of highly intense stigma, shame and trauma surrounding gender, neurodivergence, divergent sexuality and kink, Abigail’s current practice seeks to dramatically expand our collective understanding of the divergent erotic imagination and its potential to serve as a conduit through which marginalised queer, female, disabled, and neurodivergent folks explore their relationships with their bodies and brains, and cope with living in a world that is hostile to their existence.
Abigail’s practice has previously been supported by the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Shape Arts, Arts Council England, the Wellcome Collection, and the Barbican Arts Group Trust. Over the summer of 2024, she was invited to participate in a doctoral-level Human Sexuality Research Fellowship coordinated by the California Institute of Integral Studies, and was subsequently invited to present both the research paper she had co-authored during this fellowship and her own research into divergent erotic expression at the Center for Positive Sexuality’s 2024 Sexuality Scholars’ Symposium.
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Supported by funding from Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice grant series, and by the 2022-23 edition of the Emergent programme — an annual, year-long programme which supports the UK’s most promising emerging disabled artists — Abigail has begun to develop an expansive, multifaceted, multidisciplinary creative research project titled The Giantess Speaks. Diving into the misunderstood, highly stigmatised world of niche kinks and divergent “erotic affinities” — a term Abigail uses to describe somatic, imaginative, ritualistic, or aesthetic hyperfixations or special interests which may or may not be sexual in nature, but which commonly elicit emotional reactions and sensations often associated with intense desire and connection — The Giantess Speaks explores the phenomenon of queer, transgender, female, disabled, and neurodivergent folks who use their kinks and erotic affinities to explore their relationships with their divergent bodies and brains, and their relationship with the ableist, patriarchal and queerphobic world in which we live.
The Giantess Speaks project celebrates the potential of the divergent erotic imagination to serve as a subversive, revolutionary tool of healing, transgression and protest for the marginalised body. Furthermore, it seeks to bring the communities that have amassed around niche erotic affinities on ephemeral corners of the Internet out of the shadows and into wider consciousness.
More information about The Giantess Speaks can be found here.
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Abigail is the founder of The 50-ft Press, an independent risograph press based out of the backyard of her childhood home in north-east London. Abigail originally established the 50-ft Press moniker in 2023 as an imprint for her own DIY publications; however, as her research process for The Giantess Speaks has developed since, she is currently re-orienting the Press as an imprint specifically devoted to publishing works exploring the margins of sexuality, gender identity and expression, and kink from artistic, scientific and anthropological perspectives.
Abigail offers open-access printing sessions at her studio, which can be booked here.
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Additionally, Abigail frequently performs at live art, fringe theatre, and scratch cabaret events across London. As of Summer 2024, she is currently beginning to develop her debut full-length one-woman show, set to debut in mid-late 2025. Between 2019 and 2022, Abigail was a regular cast member of monthly comedic live-art cabaret Front Room Spectacular, run by writer and performer Candle Hirst at south-east London’s Matchstick Piehouse. Throughout 2022, she was also a core creative partner of eco-feminist theatre company Hoo Hah House. Alongside regularly producing playbooks, props and set decor for the company’s theatrical productions, Abigail performed as co-headliner for their Hoo Hah Halloween Party cabaret in October 2022, and as an opening act for the debut London run of the company’s 2021 Edinburgh Fringe hit BRAVE FACE the previous year.
A full Artist’s CV can be found below. A PDF of this CV can be downloaded by clicking here.
Artist’s photograph courtesy Fenella Knox.
CONTACT
I welcome correspondence regarding creative collaboration, commission of either live work or illustrative pieces, and indeed general friendly discussion on the topics of art, storytelling, trans activism and outreach, or indeed any other subject that has cropped up in my work you might wish to converse with me directly about.
(I have lived quite a lonely life up until very recently. If you write to me just asking for a casual chat, I will probably oblige!)
Email Address: abigail@beanandqueer.com
Instagram: @abigail.is.nancy
Alternatively, if you would prefer, you can fill out the form beneath with your contact details and any message you wish to send my way.
ARTIST’S CV
Current Projects
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Formerly known as Nancy//the World.
Supported by funding from Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice grant series, and by creative mentorship from the 2022-23 edition of the Emergent programme — an annual programme organised by Gateshead’s BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and London-based disability arts organisation Shape Arts, which is aimed at supporting the UK’s most promising emerging disabled artists — since late 2023, Abigail has begun to develop an expansive multidisciplinary creative research project titled The Giantess Speaks.
Diving into the misunderstood, highly stigmatised world of niche kinks and “divergent erotic affinities” – certain somatic, imaginative, ritualistic, or aesthetic fantasy hyperfixations or special interests which may or may not be sexual in nature, but which commonly elicit emotional reactions and sensations often associated with intense desire and connection – The Giantess Speaks explores the phenomenon of queer, transgender, female, disabled, and neurodivergent folks who use their kinks and erotic affinities to explore their relationships with their divergent bodies and brains, and their relationship with the ableist, patriarchal and queerphobic world in which we live. It celebrates the potential of the divergent erotic imagination to serve as a subversive, revolutionary tool of healing, transgression and protest for the marginalised body. Furthermore, it seeks to bring the communities that have amassed around niche erotic affinities on ephemeral corners of the Internet out of the shadows and into wider consciousness.
The Giantess Speaks specifically focuses on exploring these phenomena through performing ethnographic investigations into what has, in recent years, become known as the “size community” — a highly queer, highly diverse, heavily misunderstood community consisting of individuals whose divergent affinities, whether sexual in nature or not, surround fantasies of being “giants,” “giantesses,” or “tinies,” of “size-shifting,” and/or of body expansion or inflation. The size community is a quintessential example of a community centred around an identifiably interconnected taxonomic group of erotic affinities, which has provided a safe haven for many different marginalised individuals and groups to safely explore their relationships with their identities, bodies, and personal traumas. It is also a space that has become, in recent years, a valuable sanctuary in which Abigail has herself been able to process her own traumas surrounding sexuality and gender identity.
Appearing throughout The Giantess Speaks’ creative outputs, whether performative or literary, is Abigail’s alter-ego “Nancy.” Inspired by the 1958 B-movie Attack of the 50-ft Woman, “Nancy” sees Abigail reimagine the film’s titular monster, Nancy Archer,as a proudly queer, neurodivergent, rebellious riot-grrrl giantess hellbent on eviscerating all worldly trace of misogyny, queer/transphobia, ableism, and the utterly insatiable capitalist exploitation of Earth’s vulnerable natural landscapes, creatures and communities. Through the media of live theatre, ritualistic participatory performance art, and experimental fiction, The Giantess Speaks tells the tale of a woman actively attempting to turn herself into an omnipotent giant goddess whose deviant body can fatally disrupt and destroy entire oppressive socio-political systems single-handedly. No longer needing to rely upon the deus-ex-machina of an extraterrestrial encounter to turn her into her oppressors’ worst nightmare, this brand new re-imagining of Nancy is able to mutate her misfit queer body into a sublime, sapphic harbinger of utopian potentialities using nothing but her own scientific genius and pure, irrepressible moxie — and have herself a lot of fun in the process.
“After all, nuclear armageddon ain’t nothin’ but foreplay…”
The Giantess Speaks is currently in the research and development stage. A long-term endeavour, the project will eventually be realised in a number of connected creative and academic outcomes over the coming years. These include the collation of an ethnographic research archive incorporating research interview extracts and other collected ephemera derived from size community spaces — which the Wellcome Collection have agreed to accept into their library archives upon project completion — and a one-woman stage show. It will conclude completely in 2028 with the publication of a book featuring an original piece of long-form fiction, interview extracts, academic essays, and original graphic artworks.
Current research partners include curator, independent publisher and author of Deviant Desires: A Tour of the Erotic Edge Katharine Gates; performance artist, sex educator and former sex worker Annie Sprinkle; and human sexuality scholars at UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, and the Center for Positive Sexuality. Further research support is provided by staff at the Wellcome Collection, and by lecturers and researchers at Goldsmiths College and Queen Mary’s College, London. Performance and production mentoring is provuded by Frankie Thompson (CAttS, Body Show), Siân Docksey (Pole Yourself Together), Laurie Luxe (Fool’s Moon, Voices of Evil), Ida Sanguine (Black Cat Cabaret), Kaytlin Bailey (Whore’s Eye View), and Everleigh Brenner (BRAVE FACE).
The project significantly expands upon a short story the artist originally wrote and performed live as part of a small solo art exhibition, titled Anguish of the Fifty-Foot Woman, held in August 2021 at the ArtWorks Project Space in Walthamstow, east London. The artist produced and published a zine featuring this short story under her 50-ft Press imprint, which has been accepted into the library collections of the Wellcome Collection and the University of Lincoln.
Solo Exhibitions/Shows
August 2021 - Anguish of the Fifty-Foot Woman - Solo exhibition, performance and research-sharing event, BAGT ArtWorks Project Space, London.
March 2019 - The Joan Carpenter Club’s First Intervention: The East India Club. Site-specific, unauthorised interactive performance intervention, incorporating communal art-making, spoken word, role-playing exercises, comedic sketches and an artist-led tour of the East India Club, London.
Group Exhibitions/Live Shows
Upcoming
February 2025 — Nancy//the World: Prologue and SCRREW Manifesto to be performed at SizeCon, Portland, Oregon.
Previous
June 2024 — Destroying Cities Is Good For Your Mental Health performed during TRASH (Bad Art Collective), Greatorex St, London.
May 2024:
Nancy//the World: Prologue performed at ASSEMBLE Fest, Streatham Space Project, London.
SCRREW Manifesto performed at Hey Mum 3, Endeavour, London.
November 2023 — Nuclear Armageddon Ain’t Nothin’ But Foreplay: RUNT Transgender Awareness Week Takeover. Special edition of live-art cabaret Runt of the Litter hosted and curated by the artist, at which the artist additionally performed her manifesto performance SCRREW Manifesto.
September 2023 — SCRREW Manifesto (WIP) performed at Bang Average Theatre’s SCRATCH, Staffordshire St Gallery, London.
July 2023 — Nancy & Dora (WIP), performed at Live Art Club, VSSL, London.
May 2023 — Anguish of the Fifty-Foot Woman performed at Raw Eggs, Matchstick Piehouse, London.
February 2023 — A Session with Doctor Cushing performed at Buoyed, Bermondsey Project Space, London.
October 2022 — Anguish of the Fifty-Foot Woman performed at Hoo Hah Halloween Party, Dona, London.
August 2019 - October 2022 — Regular performer and event cinematographer, Front Room Spectacular, Matchstick Piehouse, London.
July 2022 — Buoyed, SET Lewisham, London.
November 2021 — Show Me Your Genitals, Baby! performed at:
Brave Face & Friends (hosted by Hoo Hah House Productions, London Hospital Tavern, Whitechapel), and at;
Runt of the Litter (Oslo House, Hackney Wick).
December 2020/January 2021 — ArtWorks Open, BAGT ArtWorks Project Space, London.
June 2019 — The Worst Fate a Man could Ever Suffer, exhibited during the 2019 Goldsmiths BA Fine Art Degree Show.
April 2019 — Fucking Lovely, Maggie. Cabaret performance and video collage, produced for Badonkadonk 2, Goldsmiths SU.
February 2018 — Oh, What FUN! Cabaret performance and audio collage, produced for Make Way! Cabaret, Goldsmiths SU.
Awards/Residencies
February 2023 - Awarded funding via Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice grant fund.
August 2022 - Awarded long-term project support by Shape Arts and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, as part of their joint Emergent programme of grants, residencies and support packages for disabled artists.
February 2021 - Shortlisted, SPACE Studio Awards.
November 2020 - 2nd Prize (£500 and solo exhibition), 2020 ArtWorks Open.
Markets/Fairs
September 2024 — FringeFilmFest x SISSY ANARCHY Queer Market, Rich Mix, London
December 2023 — Zine Takeover, Wellcome Collection, London.
September 2023 — PageMasters Zine Fair, South London Gallery, London.
July 2023 — Glasgow Zine Fest, hosted by Glasgow Zine Library, Glasgow CCA.
June 2023 — Queer & Now, Tate Britain, London.
February 2023 — Super Wedge Zine Fair, Two More Years, London
December 2022 — Queermas, Queer Mart Ldn, Aaja @ The Snake Pit, London
August 2022 — ‘Copy That’ Zine Fair, Heart of Headingley, Leeds.
June 2022:
Margate Zine Fair, Elsewhere, Margate, and;
Norwich Zine Fair, hosted by Common Threads Press at Saint Martin-at-Palace-Plain Church, Norwich.
March 2022 — Grrrl Zine Fair, Newington Green Friends’ House, London.
Education
June-August 2024 — Summer Sexuality Research Fellowship, California Institute of Integral Studies.
2016-19 — BA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Other
Ongoing, from April 2023 — Project consultant for Emma Pallett and La Femme Vitale Films on Road to the Rainbow, an original short film about queer/trans mourning, rage and joy.
February 2019 — Lead designer and feature writer, Visible/Invisible: a self-guided tour of the National Maritime Museum produced for International Women’s History Month.
September 2018 — Artist’s assistant, procession leader for Cook’s New Clothes, a performative procession devised by Khadija von Zinnenberg Carroll and hosted by the National Maritime Museum.
July 2018 — Performer for Bianca Hlywa, 2018 Goldsmiths MA FA Intermediate Show.