WORK OF THE WEEK: Abigail Reynolds, Small Green Roundel, 2019
Abigail Reynolds
Small Green Roundel, 2019
Roundel of glass made from seaweed and beach sand, blackened steel stand
Roundel diameter: 31 cm x 12 ⅕ in.
Overall: 45 x 47 x 27.5 cm / 17 ⁷⁄₁₀ x 18 ½ x 11 in.
As the colder nights draw in and the festive season beckons, Abigail Reynolds' Small Green Roundel invites us to pause for a moment and reflect on the year behind us. Currently on display in our Design House, the handmade portal calls to mind the stained glass of church windows, or the glowing glass roundels of pub doors through which warm mulled wine and conversations await you.
Abigail Reynolds works across a wide range of media, including sculpture, collage and print. 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.
Small Green Roundel is the product of the summer of 2019 which Reynolds spent gathering sand and seaweed from Bosahan, on the Helford River. Using a furnace at Kestle Barton, Cornwall, Reynolds melted her findings into glass before breathing life into them, forming a roundel. The Helford is a ria, a drowned river valley, where Iron-rich minerals wash downstream from the woods and fields, resulting in the vivid green tint of the glass. By presenting the glass in basic forms of roundels or sheets that you can look through, Reynolds evokes a renewed closeness to our landscape.
The 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.
Abigail Reynolds
When Words Are Forgotten, 2018
Steel, acrylic, tinted and textured glass and found materials
275 x 360 x 48 cm
108 ⅕ x 141 x 19 in.
Abigail Reynolds lives in St Just, Cornwall, and works from her studio at Porthmeor in St Ives. She studied English Literature at St Catherine’s College, Oxford University, and subsequently a Fine Art MA at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Reynolds has exhibited widely across the UK. Selected solo exhibitions include We beat the bounds, Tate St Ives and Lost Libraries, ROKEBY, London (2017); Double Fold, Rambert, London (2013) and most recently, Flux, Kestle Barton Gallery, Cornwall (2022). Her work is included in the Arts Council Collection, London; the New York Public Library, New York; and the Government Art Collection, London. In 2024, she was commissioned for a suite of works titled Anthronauts by Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, which are displayed in the house and garden for their summer exhibition Picturing Childhood: A New Perspective.
Over 2021-22, Reynolds exhibited across all four cities of the British Art Show 9 tour. In 2022 she completed a permanent major commission for the Kresen Kernow, the Cornish Archive Centre, accompanied by a publication. In March 2016, Reynolds was awarded the BMW Art Journey Prize at Art Basel to travel to lost libraries along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route connecting China to the Roman Empire. Her book documenting this journey, Lost Libraries, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2018.
