Abigail Reynolds: Walking A Cappella

9 Dec 2025-2 May 2026

Overview

Walking A Cappella invites visitors to consider the landscape in unexpected ways, folding together place, time, and memory. This major two-site exhibition centres on two new works that explore the edges of the land: looking down into the geology beneath our feet and out to the shifting border of the sea.
At Newlyn Art Gallery, the galleries will be opened out to the sunlight. For the first time The Studio and The Link will be exhibition spaces. A new work: Gyre is installed across the full length of the sea-facing window, incorporating glass that the artist has made using sand and seaweed from local beaches. In our main gallery, daylight will pour through the lantern ceiling, illuminating works in paper and glass.

At The Exchange, a group of masks in glass will precede an immersive three-screen film, A Book of Holes. The film begins in Holman Quarry, Redruth, where hundreds of deep holes have been drilled into the granite walls. Each hole has its own resonance, and these sounds are transformed into electronic rhythms that drive a journey through copper mining, fossils, and the marks left by centuries of extraction. The work connects Cornwall’s geology with global stories of industry, exploitation, and environment.

The phrase Walking A Cappella doesn’t exist in music, but Reynolds first imagined it in conversation with her son. It conjures the idea of moving step by step, freely and without accompaniment – finding your own path. For Reynolds, it reflects both her relationship to the Cornish landscape and to her creative process: exploring, marking out new routes, and revealing connections between past and present.

To accompany the exhibition, a 140-page monograph, also titled Walking A Cappella, will be co-published with Anomie Publishing. This artists’ book places these works in the context of Reynolds’ wider practice, which ranges across sculpture, collage printmaking, writing, film, and live events.

A full public programme of in-gallery and offsite events including Poetry and Film Nights, talks and workshops will extend the exhibition, connecting audiences with Cornwall’s ecology and overlooked elements of its heritage.