Elliptical Reading: BAS9 Manchester
My new episode of Elliptical Reading for BAS9 Manchester has its home in the beautiful oasis of the Manchester Metropolitan University Poetry Library, from 26 May until 4 September 2022.
Elliptical Reading is an invitation of library users to voice a book that's important to them, and to listen to books chosen by others that they might not otherwise spend time with. “Reynolds’s Elliptical Reading - with its emphasis on listening, connection and reciprocity - can be read as a form of communal care.” (Curators Hammad Nasar and Irene Aristizábal p.118 BAS9 catalogue)
The interventions I have made to some of the library’s ground floor windows become a moving collage, facing onto Oxford Road. The glass is a mediator, holding both sides and bathing the library in colour; what happens within the library reflects on what is changing outside.
Abigail Reynolds, Elliptical Reading: Manchester. MMU Poetry Library. 2022. Photograph: © Zoe Watson
The readings themselves take place in the library each Wednesday evening at 5.30pm, continuing from 18 May until 22 June, and all are welcome to attend in person. To celebrate the opening weekend of BAS9 in Manchester there will be a Saturday reading on 28 May 11am to 12pm.
In Manchester, the collage of texts and voices that make up the reading group are drawn entirely from poetry books and those with a particular passion for poetry.
I’ve rebound the collections that the readers have chosen to share, and they are re-shelved outside of their usual categories in the Poetry Library. Each book has a bookmark that provides – in their own voice – an insight into the reader’s choice of book.
Abigail Reynolds, Elliptical Reading: Manchester. The Curious Thing: Eva. 2022. © the artist.
FLUX, KESTLE BARTON TO 12 JUNE 2022
My exhibition Flux, continues at Kestle Barton. It documents and displays as mouth blown roundels the glass I have made using only the simple materials of seaweed and sand. You'll be able to watch a short film that documents the glass-making process. I’ve also made a Japanese wood-block print taken from a photograph of kelp floating on the shoreline as a limited edition for this exhibition. Kestle Barton's beautiful gardens are in bloom and it is a great time of year to visit a less-travelled part of Cornwall.
Abigail Reynolds, Flux, Kestle Barton. 2022. Photograph: © Nick Cooney.
TRE and FLUX, COMPANION BOOKS
With much of my work taking inspiration from books and the library as social spaces where new conversations and meanings are found, I'm pleased to have produced companion books for the recently installed public commission Tre - at Kresen Kernow, and the Flux exhibition.
Abigail Reynolds, Tre/Flux Collector's Edition with olive green kelp glass and sculptural form. 2022. © the artist.
Tre: A window for Cornwall unpicks the threads of meaning woven into the window at Kresen Kernow, and gathers together the voices of writers and academics, who share some of the many diverging stories and histories to be read in the Cornish landscape.
Flux: Glass from sand and seaweed tells the story of how I set out to change a Cornish beach into glass; the thought of the beach as a threshold, the moving line between land and sea and between fluid and solid states of matter.
I have also made a collectors' edition of 20 books. These are signed and presented together with a sculptural form enclosing a disk of olive green kelp glass. All available from the Bookshop on my website, at Kestle Barton during the exhibition of Flux, and (books only) at Kresen Kernow and Newlyn Art Gallery &The Exchange.
With all my best wishes,
Abigail
IG: @abigailreynoldsartist
Current / Soon:
Flux solo exhibition Kestle Barton Gallery, Cornwall, until 12 June (open 10.30 - 5pm)
BAS9 Manchester 27 May - 4 September. Elliptical Reading at the poetry library
Matisse & paper artists at Rheged, Cumbria 28 May - 4 Sept
Zim-Zum: The Folding World, Patrick Heide Gallery, London 8 July - 17 Sept
Kresen Kernow (Cornwall Centre), ‘Tre’ permanent commission
