Installation view

Bridget Riley | Paintings and works on paper
6 September - 6 October 2007

The exhibition will include several seminal works and trace Bridget Riley's artistic development from the dazzling black and white works of the 1960s,
with which she first made her name, through to her vibrant later work
from the 1980s. Her arresting canvas Garland, 1983,illustrated on the left, represents one of her most recognisable styles - simple bands of colour creating a visual rhythm - that developed following her travels to ancient burial sites in the Nile Valley (1979-1980). Inspired by their vivid decorations and consistent use of certain groups of colours, Riley began to explore the potential of the ‘Egyptian palette’ in her own work. Other works include Aurulum, 1977, a delicate curve painting radiating with pale, coloured light and Into Place, an important example of her so-called zig period where Riley introduced the dynamic diagonal to disrupt the balance of her pictorial space.