'Luke Elwes | Bridget Riley' exhibition review, The Week, 11 February 2023

This small exhibition, Vision and the Visionary, makes a thoughtful and intriguing pairing of British painters.

The first, Bridget Riley, needs little in the way of introduction: a pioneer of op art, she is one of the most important artists to have emerged from this country since the War, her influence stretching beyond the art world. Riley is represented here by a handful of prints which, while marvellous, serve chiefly as a foil to the works on paper fielded by co-exhibitor Luke Elwes (b.1961).

The latter, happily, holds his own: based on his observations of light on water near his Essex studio, Elwes’s watercolours are beautiful things, vivid evocations of twilight colour set off against cracks of negative space. If the obvious reference is monet, tharte are also nods to abstract expressionism and older traditions still – the fractured structure of the compositions recalling Byzantine mosaics. Seen next to Riley’s complex compositions, the effect is often mesmerising.

Frestonian Gallery, 2 Olaf Street, London W11. Until 25 February 2023.