The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists
working in the UK
Keith Richardson-Jones
At the Redfern Gallery
A review by Alan Fowler
©Copyright Patrick Morrissey and Clive Hancock All rights reserved.
Following its excellent exhibition of the work of the past-Systems Group artist,
Jean Spencer, at the end of last year, the Redfern Gallery has mounted a similarly
intriguing show of works by Keith Richardson-Jones (1925 – 2005). KRJ, as he was
generally known, shared many interests and ideas with Spencer, such as the earlier
geometric and sequential colour paintings of Richard Paul Lohse, the music of Bach
and Steve Reich, and the concept of seriality in the development of their own work.
Although he never joined the Systems Group, KJR had a long working relationship with
several of the group’s artists such as Malcolm Hughes and Jeffrey Steele. He occasionally
exhibited with them, and can be seen, with them, as an artist dedicated to exploring
the interaction, in constructive abstract art, between the cerebral mind and the
aesthetic eye in the context of the self-imposed discipline of an art form, set within
pre-determined geometric and numeric systems.
Unlike Spencer, who embarked on geometric abstraction at the age of 19, KJR was around
40 before he finally abandoned representational painting and began the 30 years of
constructivist abstraction represented by the works in this exhibition. And although
he had a solo exhibition at the Lisson Gallery in 1970 and was shown in several group
exhibitions in the early 1970s, it was not until his inclusion in the Arts Council’s
large 1978 show, Constructive Context, that he felt he had been fully recognised
as a significant systems-oriented abstractionist. The Redfern exhibition includes
a few of his earlier abstract works in colour which, while using simple numerical
or geometric systems to determine their structure, do not carry the same strength
of visual impact as the later mainly monochrome and black and white paintings and
reliefs, which form the main part of his oeuvre. There is an impression that, unlike
Spencer, he found difficulty in achieving a satisfactory integration of the subjective
aesthetic of colour with the rationality of an arithmetically influenced structure.
Where colour was used in later works it was limited to delineating separate elements
– such as a red sequence of lines distinguishing this sequence from another in blue
– or to emphasise differences in the size of a painting’s geometric forms; for example,
by reducing the intensity of a single colour in line with reductions in the size
of these forms.
He provided a succinct account of his own concepts and methods in the catalogue of
the Constructive Context exhibition. Referring to van Doesburg’s idea of “a vocabulary
of geometric form” he wrote that he used a visual language which provided “a flexible
framework for the examination of number systems in organising orders of forms within
which other unpredictable relationships and dispositions of these same forms may
occur”. He went on to describe how his paintings and shallow reliefs had, as their
basic structural premise, dimensional progressions in which “ a consistent small
difference is added at successive stages to produce a run of regular increases of
interval” – and this is indeed the dominating feature throughout the works in this
exhibition. It can be seen at its simplest in two screenprints titled simply System
Studies 1 and 2, and in two related acrylics on black polystyrene labelled Series
E.A –finite set of 2 members, all from 1988. Systems Study 1 and one of the E.A series
consist of a square divided into four horizontal rows which diminish in width in
the ratio of 4 3 2 1. The narrowest and top row is one long rectangle: the next
row consists of two rectangles: the third row has three orthogonal forms and the
bottom row has four – repeating the 4 3 2 1 arithmetic of the progression in the
width of the rows. Systems Study 2 and the second of the E.A series vary only by
the addition of a fifth row of five forms, which changes the 4 3 2 1 square to
a 5 4 3 2 1 rectangle.
The use of some form of arithmetical progression to determine the diminishing (or
expanding) size of a row or series of forms, or the size of spaces in intervals between
lines, is common to many systems-based works by constructivist artists, though other
artists have often used less simple numeric or geometric systems than KRJ. Lohse,
for example, used root rectangles, Anthony Hill used the size of intervals between
runs of prime numbers and Natalie Dower and others have used Fibonacci sequences
– e.g. 3 5 8 13 etc.. KRJ defended his use of the simpler arithmetical progression
on the grounds that it met the need, as he saw it, for only gradual, small and equal
changes. It is evident from this exhibition that this simpler structural approach
has both strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side it makes the systematised
structure of his works immediately visually evident, even to the viewer who is not
well-acquainted with this form of abstraction. In this respect, it differs considerably
from the work of an artist such as Jeffrey Steele whose 'syntagma' works have far
more complex and less obvious structural logic. But this very clarity in KRJ’s work
has the effect of reducing its subtlety – the viewer 'gets' the work within the first
few seconds of looking at it. Within an exhibition, too, when one is seeing numerous
works at the same time in the same space, there can be an element of sameness or
repetition, which runs the risk of reducing the interest and impact of works which,
if seen alone, could well provide more visual and mental stimulation.
That said, this exhibition is a very welcome contribution to the wider recognition
in the UK of systematic constructive abstraction, and KRJ’s works fully merit the
attention which a well-presented exhibition such as Redfern’s can encourage. He once
spoke of his art as being a dialogue between what he wanted it to be and the outcome
of its governing system, a view which highlighted the fact that working within the
self-imposed constraints of a system – the cerebral element – can produce visual
outcomes that were neither evident nor expected when the work was initially conceived.
He would, I think, have endorsed a comment once made by Peter Lowe: “I am driven
by curiosity to see what something that does not already exist will look like”. Viewers
of KRJ’s work can share both the satisfaction of this curiosity and his restless
search for more and better forms of marrying mind and eye.
Alan Fowler
May 2015
Ribbon Mesh Sculpture 1969 Aluminium 50 x 66 cm
(L) Series Syzygy: micro intervals II 1985 Acrylic on cotton surfaced MDF 120.5 x
90 cm
(R) Series Syzygy: micro intervals I 1985 Acrylic on cotton surfaced MDF 120.5 x
90 cm
Series CMA 1979/80 Gouache on paper 61.5 x 61.5 cm
Interspaced Sequence: red/blue I 1974 Acrylic on canvas 91 x 122.3 cm