A new Bridget Riley Exhibition is opening in The Diss Corn Hall Gallery in Diss (near Norwich, England).  The exhibition focusses on Riley’s screenprints from the past 10 years (in fact 2004-2011) and includes her ‘Rose Rose‘ piece commissioned for the Olympics.

The exhibition runs from Friday 8th June through to Saturday 30th June.  Hours are 11am to 4pm.  Entrance is free.  There is also an evening viewing on Wednesday 13 June between 6 and 7.45pm.

The exhibition has been organised in conjunction with the Karsten Schubert Gallery and David Case Fine Art.

You can find out more about it on the Diss Corn Hall website.

A new Bridget Riley exhibition ‘Bridget Riley: Works 1960 – 1966’ opened today in London.  The exhibition is split between the Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Gallery, 38 Bury Street, St James’s, London and Karsten Schubert Gallery (Karsten Schubert is Bridget Riley’s agent), 5-8 Lower John Street, Golden Square, London.

The exhibition concentrates on the ‘black and white’ period from 1960-66 which produced some of Riley’s most famous works.  A total of 45 works are on display from both private and public collections including the hugely important and influential work ‘Movement in Squares’.

Movement in Squares – Bridget Riley

Entrance to the exhibition is free.  It runs from 23 May 2012 until 13 July 2012.  If you have even a passing interest in Op Art (which I’m assuming you do since you’re on the site) and live anywhere near London then this is an exhibition you should not miss.

You can find out more about the exhibition here.

Update:

The Telegraph have published a very positive review of the exhibition here.

Michelle Genders ‘Phenomenal’ opens tomorrow at the Paper Plane Gallery, 727 Darling Street Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia.  Entrance to the exhibition is free.

Michelle Genders - Infinite

“In the midst of making work, I’ve always found myself trying to create an illusion. I decided to embrace this tendency and began investigating Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s visual illusions. He studies the underlying mechanisms of visual perception in the brain and generates illusions that activate those mechanisms. As compared with ‘Op Art’ of the 1960’s, advances in computer technology and neuroscience have generated illusions of increased complexity and intensity.

Michelle Genders - Things you can see to indicate things that you can't see 1

I began to develop my own drawings and small-scale sculpture in response to the Professor’s illusions, and the papers that he writes about them, by using some of the principals he employs. Upon review of the Professor’s website, and the work I’d been making, I realised I’d originally been drawn to particular illusions, and created certain forms in response to them, because I was reading meaning into them.”

The exhibition opens on 28th March 2012 (6-8pm) and runs from the 29th of March until 15th Apri.  Opening times are Thu & Fri 12 to 6pm, Sat & Sun 11am to 4pm.

“Josef Albers en Amerique” is currently on at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, France.  The exhibition brings together around 80 works and traces the artistic journey foreshadowing the “Homage to the Square” series, starting with his early works on paper.  It is the first time that such a large number of pieces have been exhibited in Europe and contains many rarely exhibited pieces.

Josef Albers, Color study for homage to the square, platinium, not dated

There are two additional rooms of the show which look at Albers’ influence on his students, many of whom were pioneering Op Artist themselves, including Kennth Noland, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Eva Hesse and Robert Rauschenberg.

The exhibition runs until the 30th April 2012.  If you are anywhere near Paris, I would highly recommend that you pay the exhibition a visit.

You can find out more about the exhibition at the Pompidou Centre website.

Josef Albers en Amérique – du 8 février au 30… by centrepompidou

John Cecil Stephenson was one of the UK’s earliest and most overlooked abstract artists.  He initially started off painting landscapes and portraits, but radically changed his style after a spell working in a munitions factory during World War I.  It was there that he developed a fascination with the abstract and geometric based shapes of the industrial machinery he worked with, something that was reflected in his work from that point onwards.

Stephenson was a friend of Piet Mondrian and was highly regarded by his peers, but despite this he had little recognition within the art world; his first solo show took place in 1960 when Stephenson was 71 years old.  Sadly, the following year Stephenson had a series of strokes and stopped working.  He died in 1965.

The exhibition, appropriately titled ‘Pioneer of Abstraction’ has gathered together more than 50 of his works, mainly concentrated on his output from the 1930s, and runs through to 29 April 2012.   To find out more, please see The Durham Art Gallery website.