Showcase: Abigail Reynolds

Selected as of one the ten showcases from the Annual submission entry 'Women', Abigail Reynolds' images of found objects centre on women and female representation that exists outside their own individuality.

Abigail Reynolds

I cut up and re-focus the agendas of found photographs. I work like a content manager and media representations of women feature strongly in my work. These are photographic images of women representing something beyond their own individuality – standing for a social ideal.

Each of these works focuses on a specific circumstance, so the ‘project’ is not closed into a theme, but remains as a fluid set of connections – in keeping with the multiplicity of meanings offered by individual works.

The three sets of work all use glass and focus on utopian ideologies associated with the English Countryside.

The Maidens
To Christians, ‘The Merry Maidens’ represent a circle of women who transgressed the Sabbath by dancing. Behind this, Greenham Common* women (also transgressing social norms) are shown in ‘Embrace the Base’ 1981. They join their circle with Morris dancers.

Begin Afresh
A single woman stands in a forest during the 1980s road protests. The tree she hugs appears to grow through ‘The Glass House’; a symbol of modernity like motorways she protests against. On another face of the sculpture, a winter tree appears to miraculously burst into spring life.

Year of the Flood
This combines hippies at Glastonbury fair with buildings that have lost their façades during the Florence flood. The title points to Margaret Atwood’s eponymous novel.

All images © Abigail Reynolds

*Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp features also in Up and Over and Perimeter

‘Begin Afresh’ detail, 2013.

‘Perimeter’,  2011.

To see more of Abigail’s work, click here.