New Light
Abigail Reynolds
A reflection on the city of Plymouth, a view of which operates as the fourth wall for the gallery.
Plymouth is a relic of the ideal post war city as designed by Abercrombie in the 1940’s. Reynolds contextualises Plymouth by placing it as a vision for the future alongside other realisations of communal ideologies striving to shape a better future.
Picking up on formal relations between disparate forms, Reynolds created chimes, doublings, and echoes across the works in the gallery, and outwards into the forms of the city itself.
Reynolds’ exhibition owes it’s title to a framed work in the exhibition, which shows a 1953 painting of the same title by Kenneth Noland, which has been clipped from a 1965 book and seemingly thrown into a city photographed in the 1950’s. The geometric form proposed by Noland seems to hold out a promise of renewal, contemporaneous with the city plan of Plymouth.
The exhibition was part of South West Showcase, a recurring open call platform (est 2013), showcasing artists from across the South West region. The showcase aims to support contemporary artists working and living in the South West through a year long programme of mentoring and support with an exhibition outcome; presenting a long-term commitment to profiling and supporting the practices of artists in this region.
Related to New Light
Abigail Reynolds: The British Countryside in Pictures
Martin Clark
What ben makes track for what wil be. Words in the air pirnt foot steps on the groun for us to put our feet in to.
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban, 1980
Abigail Reynolds: ‘New Light’
Simon Bayliss
Kenneth Noland’s vivid hard-edge paintings are inherently optimistic as visions for the future; ‘New Light’ is a painting by Noland and also a recent work by Abigail Reynolds.