Striped Bag

A lithograph by the Welsh artist James Rielly (b. 1956), signed and numbered by the artist. Against a sky-blue ground, a red and white striped shopping bag fills the sheet, its two handles rising like ears. In the middle of the stripes, two round blue eyes look straight out at the viewer, turning an everyday object into a strange, slightly comic creature. Rielly is known for deliberately ambiguous images that mix humour, tenderness and unease. He studied at Gloucester College of Art and Belfast College of Art, was associated with the Young British Artists and took part in the landmark Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997. He was later head of a painting studio at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and now lives and works in France. This image shows his taste for “simple stories that hide something”: a familiar shape, flat bright colour and a single unsettling detail. The print is presented in a light wood frame.