Exhibitions
Events
On display
Before and After our Cosmos
Visiting Bridget Riley’s London studio with donors in 2016
Talk
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Rediscover Bridget Riley’s Cosmos with former Gallery director Jenny Harper.
Bridget Riley has been committed to a very particular painting practice for some sixty-five years now. She works with assistants and other collaborators to make her art, from painting to printmaking, and even the occasional window work.
Jenny Harper will explore Riley’s working practice from her early years and reintroduce the conceptual basis of Cosmos, the wall painting the artist made especially for Christchurch in 2017.
Related
Exhibition
Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection
Making room for fresh voices, untold narratives and disruptive ideas.
Collection
Bridget Riley Cosmos
Unwavering in her exploration of sharp-edged, shimmering abstraction since the early 1960s, Bridget Riley draws inspiration from nature and optical sensation. She also recognises that her work conveys subtle, unexpectedand sometimes fleeting effects.
Stand back and take it all in: Bridget explains that “the colours [are] organised on the canvas so that the eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. Vision can be arrested, tripped up or pulled back in order to float free again.”
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Commentary
Anticipation and Reflection
This is a time of considerable anticipation at the Gallery: Bridget Riley’s new work for Christchurch is due for completion in late May 2017. A wall painting, it’s the fourth of five significant works chosen to mark the long years of our closure for seismic strengthening following the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010–11. It has been paid for, sight unseen, by a group of wonderful women donors, with further support for costs associated with its installation secured by auction at our Foundation’s 2016 gala dinner.