Bridget Riley‘s Composition with Circles 7 (2010), installed at the National Gallery, London, makes use of circles in a similar manner to Susan Hiller‘s Magic Lantern discussed in my previous article ‘Curated to Confuse?‘. Riley and her assistants have drawn a series of meticulously accurate, large, monochromatic circles across the entirety of a vast gallery wall. Like Hiller’s projection, they build up layers, overlapping and forming a series of Venn diagrams. However, where Hiller explores colour, Riley explores ways of tesselating the circles, creating a vast array of different size and shape sections of overlap and space, whilst maintaining a fairly ordered overall plane.
Adrian Searle furthers the link between the two by saying this work of Riley’s “… seems to envelop you as if one were consumed by bubbles of light.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2010/dec/15/bridget-riley-national-gallery-wall-circles). However this work feels much more rigid and defined than flowing light.
This is an installation of drawing which looms over the viewer, affecting our perception of space. It also physically alters the gallery walls in a museum that, due to its collection, usually retains works within a frame. Hence it is an intervention in the space, much like Doris Salcedo‘s Shibboleth (2007), a crack in the floor of Tate Modern‘s Turbine Hall.
Besides this piece, it is a small exhibition and predominantly represent’s Riley’s current work, not necessarily her most interesting. On the other hand it is interesting to see how her modern abstract style has been inspired by some more traditional sources. A couple of Riley’s older Op Art style works are included, and these create the optical illusion of three dimensionality. The exhibition Common Logic at IMT Gallery, however, exhibits a series of experiments which take drawing literally into three-dimensional space.
Art Critiqued 