Exhibition at Abbot Hall Art Gallery

Bridget Riley Silkscreen prints 1962 - 2001
13 April - 8 June 2002 at  Abbot Hall Art Gallery , Kendal - Cumbria

Following the success of the Bridget Riley exhibition held at Abbot Hall Art Gallery in 1999, there will be a new opportunity to see the screenprints of this leading British artist. The exhibition, which comes to Abbot Hall before touring extensively in Britain, presents a definative survey of Riley's printmaking and includes approximately 40 silkscreen
prints selected by the artist from all periods of her work. The exhibition also coincides with the publication of a new and comprehensive
catalogue raisonné of her printmaking with essays by Lynn MacRitchie and Craig Hartley, which will be available for the first time at Abbot Hall.

Bridget Riley gained recognition in the 1960s as the leading figure of the Op Art movement. She first achieved fame in the mid-sixties with black and white abstractions whose dazzling optical effects caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. She slowly moved towards colour through a group of delicate grey paintings. Colour, increasingly bold and sensuous, became her overriding theme in the seventies in paintings where rhythms were created by the repetition of simple forms, wavy lines, stripes and lozenge motifs.

Throughout her career Bridget Riley has made screenprints. She has 
been most active as a printmaker during periods when interest in her work was greatest, notably during the 1960s and the late 1990s, 
producing more than sixty silkscreen prints over the last four decades. In her prints, Bridget Riley has always employed challenging new techniques particular to the screenprint medium and in the 1960s she experimented with printing on plexiglas, a new form of transparent plastic which symbolised the excitement and innovation of the decade and had never been used in this way before.

This National Touring Exhibition is organised by the Hayward Gallery for the Arts Council of England.