Bridget Riley Flashback
An exhibition being held at the Walker Art Gallery, 25 September 2009 to 13 December 2009.
This is a clip of Bridget Riley in her studio in 1979, talking about the inspiration behind some of her earlier work. It also gives a brief insight into the techniques that the artist uses to create her paintings.
You can see the full video in the exhibition at the Walker.
To view this video you must have Flash Player.
Video clip courtesy of Arts Council Collection and Concord Media.
Bridget Riley: I remember one very hot summer, it was in the South of France and I was climbing a hillside of broken shale and the light was so strong that it dazzled. It seemed to come at me from all directions, it was beating down from above and beating back into my eyes at the same time. One lost all sense of focus. Everything seemed to disintegrate in light, the landscape dissolved - it was like standing in a field of pure energy.
Narrator: What is the energy of light and how do we see it? How does the eye experience the sensation of a field of force and how does a painting re-enact that experience?
Bridget Riley’s art is an exploration of the possibilities of vision. It is the result of continual trials and testing and experiments to find out what the eye can see, to experience what looking feels like.
It is work which cannot be guessed at because the experience cannot be predicted. It can only be prepared for and tried and tried again. And each time the trial must be precise or nothing will happen - for the eye is precise. And every trial must be recorded or the results can never be precisely recaptured, or elaborated, or developed.
It is not experiment in order to demonstrate anything or prove anything, but in order to bring something incalculable, something unexpected into being.
It is trial and error, a patient searching out of what will work and what will not, what colours and shapes and energies and rhythms the eye will respond to in a painting, as it does to real space, real movement, real light.