18 July 2019
‘Looking is, I feel, a vital aspect of existence. Perception constitutes our awareness of what it is to be human, indeed what it is to be alive.’ Bridget Riley, 2019
Bridget Riley (b. 1931) is one of the most respected artists working in Britain today. Her remarkable career spans seventy years of uncompromising and remarkable innovation. Through her observations of the natural world, her experience of looking at the work of other artists, and through experimentation, Riley has made a deep, personal investigation of the act of painting and of how we see. In her abstract paintings, Riley generates dynamic energy, rhythm, movement, light and space, investigating the ways in which painting can engage their viewer.
The exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy is the largest survey of Riley’s work to be held in Scotland. The exhibition places particular emphasis on the origins of Riley’s practice from her early experimentation with George Seurat’s ‘pointillism’ to the iconic black-and-white works of the 1960s to her expansive explorations into colour, wall paintings and recent works as well as studies that reveal Riley’s working methods.
We will be joined by Lucy Askew, Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, who has worked very closely with Bridget Riley to realise this spectacular exhibition.
27 May 2010 at 6pm
This month we will be visiting Sleeper to see the work of Switzerland-based artist Daniel Gottin. For the past twenty years, Gottin has focused on making temporary, site-specific interventions that examine the subjective nature of perception. His installations, always consisting of common industrial materials, such as tape, carpet, and paint, playfully respond to the specific characteristics of an architectural site and activate the viewers relationship to it.
Gottin has made the work in direct response to Sleeper’s one-room exhibition space, which is located in the basement of the offices of Reiach and Hall Architects. Sleeper was founded in 2000 by visual artist Alan Johnston and architect Neil Gillespie, to bring together a rich diversity of national and international art and as a way to continue a dialogue between contemporary art and architecture. Previous artists have included Bruce Nauman, Lesley Foxcrot, Charles Avery, Douglas Gordon, Alan Charlton, Martina Klein, Adam Barker-Mill, Thomas A Clark and Roger Ackling.
We will have the pleasure of the company of Neil Gillespie, Director of Reiach and Hall Architects, who will join us in discussions about the influence of contemporary art on their architecture and about their collaborations with the artists.
Neil Gillespie’s architectural projects include The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness which was winner of the 2007 RIAS Doolan Building of the Year Scotland Award; the competition design for Dunfermline Museum and Art Gallery; and the Beatson Institute, University of Glasgow. Gillespie is also a tutor at the Architecture Department of Edinburgh College of Art.
