Riley Sideways

“Riley Sideways” by Bridget offers a crisp, contemporary meditation on perception, movement, and optical tension. Working with a disciplined geometry and meticulously calibrated contrast, the artist orchestrates repeating linear structures that appear to shift as the viewer changes position—an approach that nods to the legacy of Op Art while asserting a distinctly current sensibility.

The sideways orientation amplifies destabilisation, turning the picture plane into an active field of visual vibration and embodied looking. Technically precise and conceptually rigorous, the work rewards sustained viewing, balancing cool formal restraint with a charged kinetic pulse.

Positioned within today’s renewed interest in systems, pattern, and screen-based seeing, “Riley Sideways” speaks to how images are consumed, processed, and felt in contemporary culture.

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her singular op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.

Riley was born at Norwood, London, the daughter of a businessman. Her childhood was spent in Cornwall and Lincolnshire. She studied at Goldsmiths’ College from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. She began painting figure subjects in a semi- impressionist manner, then changed to pointillism around 1958, mainly producing landscapes . In 1960 she evolved a style in which she explored the d…