Kaleidoscope: Colour and Sequence in 1960s British Art at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Polly Checkland Harding
‘Kaleidoscope’ feels like an apt name for this exhibition; if you’ve ever turned one before your eye, you’ll remember the constantly shifting yet neatly patterned images inside. So too does this exhibition find order – in a period of art usually characterised by bold colours and occasionally psychedelic effects. Kaleidoscope is the first Arts Council Collection survey of 1960s British art in over two decades, a touring exhibition that asks its visitors to view work by more than 20 artists through a fresh lens.
Featuring work by artists including Anthony Caro, Tess Jaray and Bridget Riley (whose seminal, trippy painting Movement in Spheres will be on display), Kaleidoscope draws out themes of symmetry, repetition and sequence; the recurring images of Pop Art and the mathematical order of Constructivism.
Director of the Arts Council Collection Jill Constantine has described art in the 1960s as a “radical break from the past”; Kaleidoscope also traces the significant influence of Caro on other artists in the period, particularly with the use of new materials. Exploring the boundaries between rationality and irrationality, organisation and chaos, this exhibition promises to reframe 1960s art in bold, colourful ways.
