The Turner Contemporary in Margate is currently hosting an exhibition that leaves visitors utterly captivated. Bridget Riley: Learning to See presents a powerful and invigorating ensemble of 26 works, demonstrating that a carefully curated, smaller exhibition can often prove more impactful than an exhaustive retrospective.
A Journey Through Perception and Colour
Spanning from the 1960s to the present day, the exhibition masterfully juxtaposes large canvases with intimate studies and works painted directly onto the gallery walls. This approach sharpens the viewer's focus and intensifies the experience. Riley's paintings possess an immediate, arresting quality that commands attention and induces a state of stillness. The longer one looks, the more these works reveal, seemingly shifting and transforming before your eyes.
The experience is both analytical and deeply physical. One finds oneself questioning the logic behind the colour order and construction, while simultaneously feeling the effects on one's own nervous system. The exhibition explores the mysterious gap between the eye and the brain, between initial perception and the lingering after-image.
Standout Works That Captivate the Senses
Several pieces within the collection are particularly noteworthy. Dancing to the Music of Time, a major wall drawing created in 2022 for a museum in Canberra, initially appears in muted, dun-coloured tones. As you approach, each painted disc begins to glow with a silvery penumbra, creating a hypnotic effect where comparing colours becomes a delightful, disorienting challenge.
Another wall drawing, Angel, features discs in stately, turning alignments. Their movement carries the brevity and apparent simplicity of a few piano phrases by Erik Satie, proving that Riley's work can be both simple and profoundly complicated at once.
Her 1965 piece, Arrest 3, with its perfectly calibrated, wave-like rhythm, plunges the viewer into an optical conundrum reminiscent of patterns on a Moorish floor. In contrast, Streak 3 from 1980 employs denser, curving coloured lines that pull the eye across swells and cross-currents.
The Artist's Enduring Legacy
At 94 years old, Bridget Riley's control over the viewer's experience is absolute. She makes you acutely aware of time, space, and your own body within the gallery. The recent Current paintings create serpentine rhythms and the illusion of triangles seen through rippled glass, with the most complex patterns proliferating in the viewer's mind rather than solely on the canvas.
Throughout her long career, Riley has held a steadfast belief that a modern artist must contribute to the art of their time. Her singular focus on the acts of looking and seeing has resulted in a body of work whose significance only grows. She masterfully prolongs a mere glimpse into a prolonged, repeated act of looking, turning concentration into a state of reverie.
Bridget Riley: Learning to See is a exhibition that leaves you wide-open, surprised, and gasping for air in the best way possible. It is a testament to an artist who makes you feel intensely alive. The exhibition runs at the Turner Contemporary in Margate until 4 May 2025.
