Abigail Reynolds

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.
45 x 47 x 27.5 cm
17 ⁷⁄₁₀ x 18 ½ x 11 in.

Abigail Reynolds is well known for her glass sculptures and her work in collage.

In 2019, Reynolds came across centuries-old kelp burning pits on the Scilly Isles. Kelp ash was used as a ‘flux’ in glassmaking, lowering the temperature at which sand melted and fused. Over the course of a summer, she set out to change a Cornish beach into glass. After gathering sand and seaweed from the beaches around her Cornish home and studio, a furnace was built at Kestle Barton in September 2019 to melt her findings into glass. By presenting the glass in basic forms of roundels or sheets that you can look through, Reynolds felt that she could evoke a renewed closeness to our landscape. Her work transforms the beach into a lens through which we can see the world in a different perspective - a less human-centred view.

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.