Artists in Conversation: Liv Preston and Abigail Reynolds

About

This event is part of the exhibition programming for Unearthing: Memory, Land, Materiality, currently on display at The Courtauld and curated by the MA Curating the Art Museum 2023 cohort. It will bring together in conversation two leading contemporary artists, Liv Preston and Abigail Reynolds, both with works on display in the exhibition. They will discuss how they relate their artistic practices to their local ecologies through site work, text based research, and fragile materials. 

Liv Preston (b. 1993 in Keighley, works in London) is an artist heavily influenced by the material language and attitudes of the landscapes of West Yorkshire. She has interests in gaming, the subterranean, and publications such as 2000AD, which manifest in her practice through a combination of sculptural works and conceptual gestures. Often this work resists traditional ways of installing artworks and the politics of display, and instead presents her work with an implication of mischief or danger as a means of undermining the gallery environment. Preston studied at the Royal Academy from 2017-2021, and some of her recent exhibitions include: Right About Now at No. 9 Cork Street, 2021; Where There’s Space to Grow at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, 2022; Hollow Earth: Art, Caves and The Subterranean Imaginary at Nottingham Contemporary and the Glucksman Gallery, 2023. 

Abigail Reynolds (b. 1975, works in St Just) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in West Cornwall. Her varied practice has been united by a continued interest in our experience of time and place, creating works which aim to warp, distort and destabilise singular narratives and histories. Reynolds uses montage techniques of layering and folding to create sculptural collages which compress long and varied histories into a single frame. She also works across the disciplines of performance, film and sculpture and works beyond sites familiar to the art world, in beaches, libraries or quarries. Reynolds completed her undergraduate degree in English Literature at St Catherine’s College at Oxford and postgraduate studies in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design and Goldsmiths. Her recent solo exhibitions include: Lost Libraries at Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel Hong Kong, 2016; We Beat the Bounds at Tate St Ives, 2017; Taken in a Few Seconds // By the Reflection of Light, The Harris Museum Preston, 2020; Flux at Kestle Barton Gallery, 2022. She has been the recipient of several awards including the BMW Art Journey Prize in 2016, and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2020.