Reimagining Riley

Art Club at Pelham Primary school has got off to an amazing start this year.

We are lucky to be working with 2 groups of lovely creative children who are bursting with ideas this year.

Annabel Johnson, Founder of Children’s Art School started the year with a lively collaborative session based on the work of artist Bridget Riley. Her abstract art works explore colour, light and optics.

We looked at a short film about her work and then used some of her paintings to make some new work of our own.

We started off by looking at a range of her work, then worked together in groups to cut out shapes that we saw in her work.

We looked at her colour combinations, layouts and patterns and the effects these had on our eyes.

We worked together to experiment with new layouts

We worked ‘factory style’ to make sure we had enough pieces to make a large work of art.

We created complex patterns

We worked together to make decisions

We kept looking back at Riley’s work for inspiration The new works came together quickly because we worked as a team.When we were ready we stuck the pieces down.

Sometimes we kept colours the same, but changed the shapes. The end results were startling! Can you see where we were inspired and where we made changes?