Bridget Riley: Messengers

A new large-scale work by Bridget Riley in Annenberg Court of the National Gallery.

Spanning a vast 10 x 20 metres, the work comprises coloured discs painted directly onto the surface of the Gallery’s Annenberg Court.

The title, ‘Messengers’, is inspired by a phrase Constable used when referring to clouds, and might also be an allusion to the numerous angels, bearers of news, that we see in the skies of so many National Gallery pictures.

Painted directly onto the wall of the Annenberg Court, this abstract work carries influences from our historic collection over into the 21st century. Throughout art history, harmonies of colour have played a large part in pictorial composition. Taking as a point of departure the paintings of George Seurat, in particular, Bathers at Asnières, Bridget Riley’s ‘Messengers’ transforms the Annenberg Court into a great white space in which coloured discs float as clouds drift in the lanes of the sky. By leaving after-images on the viewer’s retina that suggest volume and movement the longer it is perceived, the work becomes a tribute to its artistic predecessors and to the process of looking at art itself.