hello, this is bbc news. the headlines... the uk's health secretary says thejune 21st decision on easing restrictions has become "more difficult" because the delta variant is 40% more transmissible. that doesn't make life more challenging for everybody, and you have cash back that does make life more challenging, and you have seen that the cases have risen, but the hospitalisations is probably flat. vaccinations are being opened up to the under—305 this week in the drive to offer covid jabs to all adults in england. borisjohnson will tell global leaders he wants the whole world to be vaccinated against coronavirus, by the end of next year.

a two—minute silence has been held at the british normandy memorial to honour more than 22,000 members of the armed forces who died after the d—day landings. may god bless our veterans, the families and all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice as a result of the operations around d—day and during the battle of normandy. around a hundred veterans who were unable to travel to france because of the pandemic laid wreaths at the national memorial arboretum. now on bbc news, celebrated artist bridget riley shot to fame in the 19605 with a series of black and white geometric artworks and has just opened a new show in london at the age of 90. in an exclusive interview with bbc newsnight, she talks to kirsty wark about her childhood in cornwall and the impact of war on her art, on learning from her own mistakes

and on the importance of studio space for young artists. the work of british artist bridget riley has spanned 70 years, perhaps longer than any other contemporary artist in these islands and she is certainly one of the country's for most painters. her work ethic is astonishing. she hasjust opened her latest exhibition, past into present. her paintings are sensuous and to hold is exciting. she may be 90 but she is still an artist in her prime. bridget riley, how did you decide upon the title for the exhibition, past and present? i had a big retrospectivejust before covid and it gave me

an opportunity to look at my own work from way back, to look at my own past and how it appear to me in the present, now, was very interesting. and i found that the visitors, the people who came to the show actually went doing exactly the same thing so it wasn't only that my own eyesight had developed but those who had been following my work, their perception of my work had also changed. so it isn't the past, it is my past. it is also that my work has certainly drawn on the work of painters in the past. do you see things that you did not see before that you look back on your paintings from a0

or 50 years? do you look differently? yes. not always. sometimes old friends. sometimes i see things i did not intend, didn't see, didn't hope for, were not apparent to me. are you ever in a gallery when viewers are discussing paintings and you're talking about young people, you like having that young people have to say about your work. they can see it is about how i think, widespread. and they like that they have included in it and i'm very thrilled that they feel included. because it only works, in a way, if you include the viewer. the little studies i make,

they are very intimate because i am finding out what i can see, and my little separate collage, dots or circles or discs are agents for looking. so when i have had a dialogue and feel that i can't push it any further, that's what they pick up on. a movement in squares. it was one small change slowly, slowly, building on, building on, building on, building on until it accelerated

into a rapid movement in the square. it, so to speak, shuttled almost through extension. ——extinction. and then it would have closed the painting. there would not have been anything there. i could do nothing but come back and the next painting that was black to white discs, i wanted to slow the whole thing down. and i realised that if you make it larger you slow it down even more. it all takes time and if they're willing to give time, which i was so absolutely thrilled to see they were, then, through looking, you can learn to see.

so you could actually see, if you were watching somebody looking at your painting you could see this almost in front of your eyes. i remember seeing a child going across to one of my brightly coloured paintings, back from japan, and heading for it like a beeline. a strange, very interesting thing happened to me — i was told about a little boy of six who looked at a painting that his father had bought, of mine, and he said, "i know what it is." she chuckles. and i was so thrilled to hear that. when you move from black and white that was momentous for you.

well, i was heading towards it because i had reached a certain understanding of colour and a certain ability to deal with it through my copy of pointillism and i came to understand something very important about colour through that. the induction of colour, that is, can induce something it is not so it is an immense, unstable, essentially unstable, but because of that, a huge, exciting field to work with. black and white is a colour, really, isn't it? and they generate other colours, they really do. so it is about repose, disturbance and repose. why is that...

why is that a good mantra? so i start with something. i think about what it is, what constitutes it. and then i wonder if, it is very speculative, if i make a small change, a very smallest change possible, without disturbing its character butjust tipping it a little bit. and a little bit more. and i don't know where it will go but it will precipitate some kind of... you are disturbing its inner nature.

you just stop, yes. but you don't stop because you have to return. you have to bring everything back. so that's the way you exercise... that's repose again. i want to talk about your own early memories of looking in cornwall. about how you looked and learned to look. i think it was because we had evacuated ourselves, my mother, my sister and i and my father's sister. he had gone to the wall. we had a very small cottage. i did not go to school for quite a long time, which was very heavenly.

so there was, in fact, nothing to do but look and enjoy and appreciate and move around in this extraordinarily beautiful landscape. catching glimpses of the sea and pebbled beach. which actually, in fact, is where i swam... what is that, do you remember? well, it was a description of, actually, swimming in a pool, which i can remember very well. and this little pool was quite shallow at one end and there you could see down to the colours of the seaweed and anemones and other little things in it.

at the same time, there was a reflection from the cliff above, which was glowing with green grass and yellowy flowers. and reflections from the sky and these mixtures of all colours you could perceive layering one upon another in this way, they also generated, which was extraordinary, an after—image. a collective after—image of red, which dotted round in your eyesight, looking at it, and it was colour being faceted, so to speak. and so that was it.

do you think that your mother and your aunt actually saw something in you that was perceptive to that, to light and colour? do you think you were being encouraged without you knowing it? well, my mother had a great eye, and she collected china. she did not mind if it was broken, cracked, if it was a wonderful colour and had just that something which made it remarkable in some small way. or in a large way. but do you think it was then that you made the foundations of an artistic personality? do you think that is where it came from?

yes, i do. we were there nearly five years, for years. it was the same walks, i mean, seasons changing and my father went to the war and was reported missing and we lost him for many years and then we did hear that he was alive and then he came back. so the war was very personal. at very close quarters indeed, in some ways. but also, you know, happening miles and miles away. as a war child when you were, in a way, conditioned

was a way that, in your art, to unpredictability and uncertainty if there was a way that, in your art, you created a kind of rhythm and certainty in your art and an element of control. yes, i do think so. i think that when the war was over and the immediate dangers had died down, i then felt it was time to do something about it, as it were. i thought i could do something about it. this is an exhibition on view at the museum _ this is an exhibition on view at the museum of— this is an exhibition on view at the museum of modern art in new york city.

here is current by the british artist bridget riley. it is black—and—white, no colour. the one period people talk about you having, what is the right expression, ambivalence towards is the whole op art time. you were associated with it almost against your will? 0ptical painting was foreseen, the need for it was foreseen or some revision of... i think it was said we need new optics when he found that actually what we actually experienced did not measure up to the organisation of pictorial space. to picture making as it

was, as it had been. when your art was displayed alongside 60s fashion and so forth you did not see that as being something you particularly enjoyed. i think the museum lost control of it. people were very excited about it because they did sense quite rightly that there was a big field here, a huge opportunity for really a new look at things or a new way of approaching them and itjust felt that it was too much. do you think abstract is the right word for you as an artist? you are always called an abstract no, i don't know that it is. i think it is the one we use, so i go along with it

perhaps, a painter, first and foremost. and that is what i do. and i explore. and i try to understand and try to find out what i can look at. what we can see. i wonder, in your long career, artistic dilemmas. you've only used 3d once. now, tell me about that. tell me about why you only used it once. was it a success? was it not a success? that came about when the national gallery bought a big water lily painting, and you are enveloped in it.

you see the clouds in the sky reflected down amongst the water lilies. it is a whole world and you are enveloped in it visually. and i thought i would make a big painting which i enveloped you physically. a great mistake. that was too literal. absolutely too literal. so i went back to flat painting and engaging you with paintings proper conditioning. that is flat and open. if you have not done that, then you would not know that is where you wanted to be so is there ever such a thing as a mistake or is itjust...? no, you are quite right. in ways, it is not. as matisse said, don't get

rid of your mistakes. you know, they are the things that will help you to move and think and understand. there is a great variety for bridget riley. the huge exhibition you are doing now and you also have much more smaller exhibitions where, for example, in ayrshire, where people come and talk to you. how much do they like having this idea of having bridget riley to themselves for a little while? this exhibition happened a long time ago and that must have been at the beginning of the 805. it was quite a long time ago and i was not, at that moment, people were not liking my work very much.

it was doldrums and that must happen and does happen in a painter�*s life, you know. and so i was very glad of the chance to go somewhere else and i went and gave a talk and there were 15 people in the audience. they were so, so, asked me such good questions. we had a ball. we had a great great time. looking at where art education is, is there a way coming out of the pandemic that artists will find spaces they will work in they never have before? department stores and office blocks, is there a way artist should inhabit them for their and for our good?

i have been down that path before with space studios. we actually managed to get saint catherine's dock, which was... had been empty since before the war and studio space is a vital thing for painters. you can draw to some extent anywhere, but you need a studio, really increasingly if you want to develop painting and let your work grow. you need space. so it can be done, but the private investor who may have come

from abroad with his empty office space would need to be persuaded, somehow, that what happened was the docks were vacant. but i do think that there could be governmental support and also private enterprise to take a hand. there are issues about how much is being cut from arts education at higher education colleges for the people doing lots of good work but resources are being squeezed. is there a danger that you squeeze out the artistic sentiment from people? i don't think, not the creative, not the desire to do

something about what you see, what you feel and the arts are, they can be anything from a safety valve to, you know, a very highly developed expression of complex responses. it is not a question, really, of money. it is a question of wanting to do something and wanting to make an effort. of wanting to, ofjust realising how amazingly fortunate we are. when you are painting or when you are preparing, what music do you like to listen to? i don't like any music when i am working because it's dividing my attention.

i can't do that. but i play music later. a piece of music that i'm enjoying very much at the moment is this one by schubert which is his last sonata and he died when he was 33, quite a young man. but it is a lovely piece. why do you like it so much? i think you just have to listen to it. music plays. each note is so separate. absolutely like the relationship between colours, they interact and they make this other whole but also each colour or each note is clear. do you think art has helped you understand the world? has that shaped your understanding of the world? oh, i don't know.

no, no, i think that... yes, i do, actually. i think that artists have, painters have borne witness. it is one of the tasks, so to speak, to changing circumstances and events, to horrors as well as to wonders. and so to hold a mirror up to human nature and report it faithfully... you said in 2009, for the last 50

years, it has been my belief that, as a modern artist, you should make a contribution to the art of your time even if it is only a small one. so what do you think your contribution has been? i couldn't. .. i couldn't say. that is what for other people to, and i suppose that i hope that when you ask me if i could make a contribution at the time, hoping that i can in some way to order, stability... to pleasure. to joy of living. you know, the great privilege we have in being alive. and so especially when i think that, you know, with the time that i have

still, i want to make the most of it and actually explore further some of the possibilities i see. lovely. thank you very much. thank you very much indeed. scotland and northern ireland will continue to see the best weather through the rest of today, it should stay dry with spells of sunshine, some brighter skies across parts of england and wales but more cloud, pockets of rain and drizzle and where it brightens up that could trigger some heavy thundery showers further south. best temperatures towards the south—east, 21 or 22 in the sunshine, for scotland and northern ireland, 17 or 18. still some wet weather threatening to run east across england this evening, first part of the night, then out into the north sea, it becomes dry later, more mist and fog around

by the end of the night, lowest temperatures in scotland with clear skies. here some sunshine to come but we're likely to trigger a few heavy, perhaps thundery showers in the afternoon from east anglia into the north—east of england, one or two in scotland. the further west you are, a better chance of staying dry with sunshine, temperatures tomorrow very similar to those of today.

good afternoon. the health secretary, matt hancock, has said that the new delta variant of coronavirus, first recorded in india, is about 40% more infectious than the version detected in kent. mr hancock said increased transmissabiltiy was making the decision on whether to lift all remaining restrictions in england on the 21st ofjune more difficult, and that the government is open to a delay if needed. but he told the bbc that the number of people needing hospital treatment was broadly flat, which means vaccines are working. 0ur political correspondent helen catt reports.