ABOUT THE WORK
Artist Abi Palmer has produced two new limited edition prints for CAMPLE LINE – Hand / Mirror / Leaf and Cha-u-Kao Sniffs a Cloud of Oyster Mushroom & the Mushroom Sniffs Back. The two prints form part of a body of work that Abi began developing in the context of the pandemic, which explore her relationship with her housebound cats Cha-u-Kao and Lola Lola. Abi lives on the third floor of an ‘accessible’ building, although that doesn’t make it easy to access the outdoors. By default, Cha-u-Kao and Lola Lola are indoor cats, and during the pandemic, Abi related to their desire to interact with an outside that they could not reach. It was a desire she herself recognised, compounded by the circumstances of the lockdowns and restrictions, and she began exploring ways of reproducing the outside world for them.

The two new prints for CAMPLE LINE use still images taken from footage related to Abi’s short film All the worlds you’ll never see (2021), which screened at CAMPLE LINE in August 2022 as part of a programme entitled Performing the Outside World. All the worlds you’ll never see was commissioned by Shape Arts in 2021 and chronicles some of Abi’s initial efforts to bring the outside world to Cha-u-Kao and Lola Lola. In the film, we see Abi gathering flowers, grasses, leaves and bits of twig, which she brings together in her spare room as a sensory environment for the cats to explore. The process of sharing her findings with her cats became a regular aspect of play and bonding, engaging them in sensory interaction and movement.

In Hand / Mirror / Leaf, we can see the wing mirror of Abi’s mobility scooter reflecting her hand as she gathers foliage; the risograph process lending an airy, impressionistic quality to the print.

As part of an Artangel commission launching in March 2023, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather, Abi has developed four new films in collaboration with Cha-u-Kao and Lola Lola, which take the seasons at their starting point. For each film, Abi used sensory found objects from local woodlands to reinvent the experience of autumn rain, winter fog, spring sunlight and summer heat for her cats.

‘The accompanying voiceover, written and narrated by Palmer, is a love letter to her cats and the climate, and explores the tensions between what we can and can’t control. The resulting films are a playful meditation on disability, climate, and life that can’t talk back.’

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Abi Palmer is an artist and writer. Her work often touches on themes of disability, queerness and multisensory intervention. 

If you have any questions about Abi’s two editions, please contact us at info@campleline.org.uk