Dialogues

Fiona Grady, Tess Jaray, Bridget Riley and Carol Robertson

Flowers Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of prints by Fiona Grady, Tess Jaray, Bridget Riley and Carol Robertson, focusing on a selection of works in which silkscreen printing has been used as a vital method to investigate the complex and dynamic interactions of colour, form, space and light. 

Comprising precisely delineated geometric shapes, repeated and reflected forms, and subtly fluctuating radiant fields of colour, the works in the exhibition expand upon the experience and perception of surface, depth and movement within pictorial and perceptual space.

Tess Jaray’s minimal geometric compositions reflect the order and form found in both natural and manmade phenomena, creating subtly shifting spaces using repetition and pattern, often relating to architectural structures, such as repeated stripes, zigzags and diamonds.  In the Thorns series, the intense contrast of a repeated pattern of cascading vertical arrow-like shapes and coloured grounds creates an ambiguous and intangible sense of perspective and depth, in which colour appears to hover or emanate from the centre of the print.  A similar jagged repeating pattern bisects the pictorial plane in Jaray’s series Dark and Light, while the contrasting coloured backgrounds appear to control the movement of the forms.

Coloured Greys is a suite of three prints by Bridget Riley, produced during a period of the 1970s in which Riley moved from black and white to greys, before working exclusively with colour in the 1980s. Each print in the series is comprised of fluctuating, horizontal waves of subtly modulated greys, which allowed Riley to investigate the vast possibilities of colour combinations, and their interrelation with the curvilinear shapes. Shifting the balance of light and movement through tones of greens, purples and browns, the visual experience is often described as a sensation of water rippling across the surface. The Coloured Greys 1,2 & 3 were released in an edition of 125, winning the 8th International Japanese Print Biennale in 1972 (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan.)

Carol Robertson’s new Free Fall monoprints navigate new territory in her printmaking oeuvre, extending her tonal range into ever more complex colour variations. As the title Free Fall implies, Robertson takes an intuitively playful approach rather than using a pre-ordained system. The central squared-up motif runs ladder-like, top to bottom, inviting the eye to jump from one radiant colour to the next, building complex layers of association from their individual properties. Robertson has made nearly fifty unique variations in the series, with every print possessing its own individual rhythm and character.  

Alongside a new series of screenprints created especially for the exhibition, Fiona Grady will complete a drawing installation painted directly onto the gallery walls, comprised of a rhythmic sequence of geometric shapes. The prints respond to the structure of the wall drawing, recalling shadows cast within the urban landscape - such as light falling through metal railings or window panes. Grady explores how we measure and understand the passing of time through an awareness of light, with each colour indicating a stretching of lines as the sun rises and sets, emphasised by the cooling of tones as they lighten and become more translucent.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

FIONA GRADY (b. 1984, Leeds, UK) studied BA Fine Art at the University of Wales In Cardiff (UWIC) 2004-2007 and MA Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art (UAL) 2010- 2011.  She lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Rendered Invisible, The Art House, Wakefield (2016);  The Movements, Adhoc in Bochum, Germany (2017); and Shadow Play, Chapter Art in the Bar in Cardiff. Grady has been short-listed for several printmaking prizes including Neo-print Prize (2014), Bainbridge Open (2013) and Clifford Chance’s Survey of MA printmaking (2011).  Her public commissions include A Field of Light, Deptford Rail Station (2012), Illumination II, Leeds Town Hall (2013), Natural Triangulations, Walthamstow Wetlands Visitor Centre (2017) and Kaleidoscope, Broadgate London (2018).

TESS JARAY (RA) was born in 1937 in Vienna, Austria and moved to UK in 1938. She currently lives and works in London. The artist studied at St Martin’s School of Art, London (1954-57) and later at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (1957-60), where she also taught from 1968 until 1999. Examining the geometry of pattern, repetition and colour within her surroundings, Tess Jaray has explored painterly perspective for more than five decades. She has had solo exhibitions at The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, (1984); The Serpentine Gallery, London (1988). Jaray has also participated in group exhibitions such as Op and Pop: Current English Art at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (1965); The 9th International Art Exhibition of Japan at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, (1967); British Painting 1974 at Hayward Gallery, London, (1974). Works by Jaray are also included in the permanent collections at The Tate Collection (London) and The Victoria and Albert Museum (London).

BRIDGET RILEY (RA) was born in 1931 in London, UK, and studied at Goldsmiths College (1949–52) and Royal College of Art, London (1952–55). Riley has been exhibiting internationally since 1962 and was initially brought to prominence by the Op Art movement during the early 1960s. Notable solo exhibitions include Bridget Riley: Drawings (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966); Bridget Riley: Works 1959–78 (touring, 1979); Bridget Riley: Paintings from the 60s and 70s, Serpentine Gallery, London, (1999); Bridget Riley,Tate Britain, London, (2003). Bridget Riley was made a CBE in 1974, appointed the Companion of Honour in 1999, and received the Kaiser Ring of the City of Goslar in 2003. Significant awards include the International Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale (1968) and the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen (2012). 

CAROL ROBERTSON (b. 1955) lives and works in London. She was Research Fellow in Painting at Cardiff School of Art & Design from 2003 - 2008. Her work has been exhibited extensively around the world, with notable solo exhbitions including Garden Project, Kunstgarten, Graz, Austria (2012); Year, East West October Foundation, Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands (2006); and Abstract Realities Part 1, National Museum & Gallery, Cardiff (2004). Recent selected group exhibitions include Harvest, Kunstraumlangois, Austria (2016); Ka! Editions, Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Spendhaus, Reutlingen, Germany; and A Collector’s Eye - artworks from the Van Hulten Collection Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen-Oranjewoud, Holland. Since 2001 she has been a Returning Fellow at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland. In 2012 she was artist in residence at the Kunstgarten in Graz.