Bridget Riley, Still Shimmering

Op art – short for ‘optical art’ – is painting reduced to its most essential – using most basic elements of shape, colour, tone and pattern to explore the experience of ‘seeing’.  If you look it up, in the first couple of sentences you’ll read the name ‘Bridget Riley’.

Op art really launched in the 1960’s and Riley’s work was groundbreaking.  Fifty years on Bridget Riley is still exploring, discovering and breaking ground. Her significance has been recognised since the 60’s but her recent retrospective at the RSA in Edinburgh and the Hayward Gallery in London mark an unprecedented coming-together of almost 70 years of her work, from early student drawings and studies to recent work.

Little has been filmed of Bridget over the years so we were excited to have been engaged to deliver this Retrospective. Bridget’s relationship with the team at National Galleries of Scotland made possible this series of interviews and walkthroughs, firstly of the exhibition in Edinburgh and later in London.

We had our first experience of Bridget’s warmth, wit and insight filming her conversation with National Galleries of Scotland Director-General Sir John Leighton.   We then filmed a walk-and-talk through the show with art critic Michael Bracewell followed by Lucy Askew, the chief curator behind the RSA show.  In London Bridget talked with curator and Hayward Director, Ralph Rugoff about her work and the show there.

Filming the work itself was challenging – colour and crop are understandably of the utmost importance to an artist – so we worked hard to show colours as they were intended under the different lights of the exhibition spaces. Bridget also shared her insight into how works could be experienced moving from one room to another, so it was important that we mimicked this with some careful tracking shots too.

But the memorable moments were with the works themselves. Standing in the vaulted central gallery of the RSA, with room for these works to breathe (they’re big – some over 2m high and 4m wide, some directly painted onto and covering a wall), the feeling is less cold and queasy and more warm and uplifting – inviting you in.

Bridget Riley’s current works are playful and exploratory, an inspiration to witness such continued freshness, curiosity and engagement in someone who has achieved so much for so long.  Enjoy her conversation with Sir John Leighton below – and watch this space for more content in the near future!