Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert brings together works spanning three distinct phases of Bridget Riley’s career, revealing the remarkable evolution of her exploration of visual perception. Over a career lasting more than sixty years, Riley has become renowned for her ability to produce images that both challenge and amuse the eye. Spanning the period from 1962 to 2015, the works are united by the artist’s abiding concern with conveying the experience of sight. Across a range of media and remarkably diverse scales, they create an arresting display of visual sensation.
Both powerful and serene, the works in this exhibition illustrate Riley’s enduring motivation to capture the wonder of the most basic human experience: sight. The root of Riley’s engagement with visual experience is nature and, in her compelling essay The Pleasure of Sight (1984), she describes the inspiration and joy she derived from looking at the landscape and observing the effects of light and weather during her childhood in Cornwall. Riley’s work, however, paradoxically withdraws from the depiction of the external world.