ABIGAIL REYNOLDS & JOANNA KAVENNA IN-CONVERSATION

Kavenna visited Reynolds’ studio in Jun 2025 and wrote Turning in the Widening Gyre, describing the experience. Her essay is not only funny and consummately well written it’s also revelatory of the artist’s wider practice and approach.

Kavenna’s extraordinary new absurdist novel, SEVEN has just been published by Faber. In exchange for the essay in Walking A Cappella, Reynolds made a game board for the fictional game of SEVEN around which Kavenna’s latest novel revolves. The board follows the preoccupations of the book, and its pieces draw on natural forms, mathematical tilings, number games and infinity, ritual landscapes, time, and puzzlement.

At The Exchange they will discuss their recent collaborations, the weaving of improbable narratives, the nature of complexity, and holes.

Walking A Cappella is co-published by Anomie and Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange and is available to buy from the gallery and on the artist’s website. Designed by Michael Kelly, a flow of images of Reynold’s work is contextualised with commissioned texts from the novelist Joanna Kavenna and curator Hammad Nasar, as well as a dialogue with Sophie J. Williamson.

TICKET INFORMATION:

FREE WITH ADMISSION, BUT BOOKING ESSENTIAL TO RESERVE YOUR PLACE
This event is included with standard admission, but please book your place in advance to reserve a seat. Free entry for Supporters, Patrons, Art Lovers, and current Annual Pass holders (please bring it with you on the day). If you do not have a current Annual Pass, please purchase an admission ticket on arrival, which gives you 12 months entry to exhibitions at both venues plus access to the talk.

50% off standard admission with a National Art Pass.

AUTHOR'S BIOS

Joanna Kavenna is the author of several critically acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Ice Museum, Inglorious, Come to the Edge, A Field Guide to Reality and - most recently - Zed. Her novel Inglorious won the Orange Award for New Writing, and The Birth of Love was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Joanna Kavenna’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, London Review of Books, The New York Times and many other publications. She was named as one of the Telegraph’s Best Writers under 40 in 2010 and as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013.

joannakavenna.com

Abigail Reynolds lives in St Just, Cornwall, and has a studio at Porthmeor in St Ives. She received a BA in English Literature at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, and subsequently an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Over 2020–22 her work was featured in British Art Show 9, the landmark touring exhibition that defines new directions in contemporary art. In 2016 she was awarded the BMW Art Journey prize at Art Basel, to travel to lost libraries along the Silk Road. Her book Lost Libraries documenting this journey was published by Hatje Cantz in 2018. Her works are in collections including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Government Art Collection and The Arts Council Collection UK.

abigailreynolds.com

@abigailreynoldsartist