Life of Riley

Kettle’s Yard’s retrospective of abstract artist Bridget Riley is sure to be one of this autumn’s exhibition highlights.

The Cambridge gallery is marking not only Riley’s 80th birthday, but also the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough work Movement in Squares, the eye-bending monochromatic work that set the template for much of Riley’s optical illusion-style canon.

The exhibition will feature paintings and studies by Riley from the last 30 years and traces her thematic progress through four chapters: stripes, planes, curves… and finally back to stripes.

While Movement itself will not be on show, works such as her Painting with Verticals 3 and most recent Rose Rose series will be there.

The show will trace Riley’s initial inspiration from her Cornish childhood (‘my mother… would always point things out: the colours of shadows, the way water moves), the way her work was influenced by colours she saw on a visit to Egypt in 1979 and her transition through different structural elements.

Bridget Riley: Colour Stripes Planes and Curves, is at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, from 24 September-20 November.