Bridget Riley’s paintings of purring lines, zips and tongues cavort playfully on an epic scale
On a cold and soggy winter day we set out for London to visit the major retrospective of artist Bridget Riley. She is one of those painters that has to be seen in person. There is definitely a sense of being transformed by or through the colour relationships she explores in her paintings. The result is they create a deep and lasting positive feeling, like being beamed up into the purring lines and out the other side (in the process) a kind of re-materialisation happens.
Bridget Riley experiments with an obvious love for nature and careful consideration of forms that enable repetiton and complexity of moving parts and associations — emitting and colliding across the canvas in lines, vortexes, spots, triangles, zips and tongues of colourful rhyme. The horizontal and vertical wave paintings (apart from being impossible to photograph) have an energetic field and absorb time with a universal hum; a bit like hearing a tree full of bees and smellingblossom for the first time.
We were lucky to be left alone long enough for the marks on the canvas to somehow take over, there is nothing illusory about the experience either, it is very physical and months later still brings a sense of visual ecstasy. Art was definitely the reset our mind needed and the affect of spending time with her paintings has been lasting.
IN PICTURES — Bridget Riley at the Hayward Gallery in London.
Towards ‘Lagoon’ (1992)
Elapse (1982) Detail
Pause (1964) Detail
Painting with Verticals 3 (2006)
Cataract 3 (1967) Detail
Current (1964) Detail
Drift 2 (1966)
Ra (1981) Detail
From Here (1994) Detail
Crest (1964)
Rajasthan (2012)
Burn (1964) Left and Pink Landscape (1960) Right
Kiss (1961)
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ABOUT STUDIO GRRR
Hiya, we are Glen & Rebecca mischievously-led married couple with a shared love of books, drawing, colour, pattern and stories.
We make Art, Design Book Covers and Tell Stories.
For thirty years we have been Artists, Designers, Educators, Public Speakers, Creative Nomads and Heritage Crafts People.
Nice to meet you.
We believe creativity has an important role in our society and stories in the form of art, design and writing provide a vital gateway to our continued education and open doors to the imagination of others. At their best stories can challenge the way we view world and creativity gives these crucial ideas form and permanence. For thirty years we have found and lost, read, watched and listened to many fairy tales, folk-stories, discovered ancient symbols and thought about the reality of things (we believe stories are the orienting structures of our lives and language shapes reality).
Our artists books, paintings, journals, street art, pamphlets and zines have been exhibited at Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Leeds City Art Gallery, Hotel Maria Kapel (NL), The Enschede Academy of Visual Arts (NL), East Gallery (Norwich), Ruskin Gallery (Cambridge), Permanent Gallery (Brighton) Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico), Manchester Craft and Design Centre, K Gallery (California) SHOWROOM (Austria), Bureau Gallery (Manchester), PrintROOM’s AmsterdamZineJam and The Anti Design Festival (London)
DESIGN & COMMERCIAL WORK
We currently focus on book cover design and editorial based projects for independent and commercial publishers, research departments, universities, cultural organisations, academics and artisan makers. We have recently completed projects funded by The National Centre for Writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich University of the Arts, The Lithuanian Culture Institute, Ministry of Culture Taiwan, Pro Helvetia, LTI Korea and The Nippon Foundation.
CREATIVE LEADERSHIP IN ARTS EDUCATION
Glen has been working in the Creative Industry for over thirty years and has been a Leading Design Educator for over twenty years. He has been an Educator to some of the most influential Graphic Designers and Notorious Creative Leaders around today and has taught students from all over the world. He has developed a deep understanding for mentoring designers which empowers and celebrates individuality and fosters a critical approach to creativity through curiosity, play and discovery. He is course leader for a unique rabble-rousing bunch of story-tellers on the BA (Hons) Design for Publishing and BA (Hons) Graphic Design Programmes at Norwich University of the Arts.
WORDS ART PHOTOGRAPHY By Glen & Rebecca (aka Studio GRRR)
Words are reproduced without permission and published as a matter of public interest.
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BLOG AND STORIES
Our Blog is a curated collection of articles, stories, reprints, photographic essays, conversations and inspriation written for the curious minds of analogue people living in a digital world. Through our life’s journey we stumble through layered narratives found in naturally occurring intersections between the metaphysical realm, and terrestrial landscape, collecting spell fragments from a cast of unlikely collaborators.
Angels, demons, gods, ancestors, aliens tell of a bizarre world brimming with legacy broadcast media, music, philosophy, literature, fictional characters, and the simple truth of everyday life and death.
From this confused debris we conjure and construe interconnecting polychromic stories (we think stories and light are the orienting structures of our lives) about art, creative practice, communication theory, how language shapes our reality, mental and physical health, comedy, music, the politics of bullshit and lashings of esoteric flim-flam.
