This exhibition is a pretty comprehensive retrospective of Bridget Riley’s career ranging from the “optical illusion” black and white pieces that made her name to her latest more spare work.
It was interesting to notice how differently the eye and the camera saw things: for example the overall composition of Tremor, below, is much easier to read in a photograph than by the human eye. I prefer the ambiguity of looking at it in real life as it does seem to move.
I hadn’t come across the murals before (apart from Messengers, her recent National Gallery commission).
Composition with Circles 4 is massive, stretching the length of a long wall and combining stimulation for the eye as well as being extremely elegant.
The exhibition displays Continuum, the only three dimensional piece Bridget Riley produced which is a spiral you walk into. She decided after this to focus on two dimensions where the viewer is absorbed by looking rather than physically surrounded. Here are a couple of images taken from inside the piece.
When she moved onto colour things got even more interesting. Look at how the colours, soft and subtle from a distance, are actually really bright, even garish close-up – endlessly absorbing.
I did feel a bit sorry for the gallery invigilators as some of these pieces can induce a feeling of instability, even nausea, if looked at for too long at any one time. More in my next post.
