PRESENTATION: Abigail Reynolds-Works in Glass

Abigail Reynolds uses montage techniques of layering and folding to destabilize singular ideas of cultural and political ecologies. She often works in dialogue with disciplines and places outside the art world; for example, geologists, librarians, a silver band. She works across sculpture, print and film as well as creating events to bring disparate things into conversation. She works with a strong awareness of plurality; keeping a space complex and unreconciled.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: The New Art Centre Archive

Abigail Reynolds scours flea markets and old bookstores to find material that she then repurposes for artworks.  She collects old books and photographs from atlases, tourist guides and encyclopedias, many of which feature rural English landscapes, and turns the material into three-dimensional collages.  In doing so, Reynolds questions the way in which our relationship to the visual world, and particularly the British landscape, is mediated and understood through a populist lens. Abigail Reynolds ‘s solo exhibition “Works in Glass” celebrates her works in glass from 2018 to the present day, as well as a selection of her paper collages from the series Universal Now, in which the folding and layering of historic images brings into focus our relation to time. Working from her studio in Porthmeor, St Ives, Reynolds draws from the Cornish landscape and its rich cultural heritage: inspired by ancient Cornish customs such as burning seaweed to use in glass making, or beating the bounds, the artist adopts age-old practices to convey contemporary messages. She reuses found glass, or her own handmade glass, to create lenses through which the landscape beyond can be seen in a new light. In September 2019, having spent a summer gathering sand and seaweed, a furnace was built at Kestle Barton, Cornwall, to melt these simple materials into glass. By presenting the glass in basic forms of roundels or sheets that you can look through, Reynolds feels that she can evoke a renewed closeness to our landscape. Abigail Reynolds studied English Literature at St Catherine’s College, Oxford University, and subsequently a Fine Art MA at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Literature has a resounding influence in her work, with the artist drawing thematic inspiration from famous authors, libraries, and novels. When “Words Are Forgotten” (2018) – one of her large scale pieces on display – mimics library shelves laden with overlapping books, inspired by a pilgrimage which Reynolds embarked on in 2016 to the sites of 15 lost libraries along the ancient ‘Silk Road’. Similarly, “Tol II” (2024) stems from literary roots, with Reynolds imagining viewing the Cornish landscape through the eyes of three women who worked in it before her: Barbara Hepworth, Daphne du Maurier and Virginia Woolf. Within its steel framework are set panes of printed glass with images referencing du Maurier’s Vanishing Cornwall (1967), and Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse (19/27). Situated in the gallery, Reynolds’ glass creations engage in a shifting dialogue with their surrounds. With light constantly altering this relationship, her work invites us to contemplate our sense of time and place within the landscape at Roche Court.

Photo: Abigail Reynolds, ‘When Words Are Forgotten’, 2018, Steel, acrylic, tinted and textured glass and found materials, 275 x 360 x 48 cm, © Abigail Reynolds, Courtesy the artist and The New Art Centre

Info: The New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Roche Court, East Winterslow, Salisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, Duration: 6/7-1/9/2024, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-16:00, www.sculpture.uk.com/