During my art school days in London in the mid-1970’s, a number of European and English non-objective and systems artists were using the term ‘non-hierarchic’ to indicate that no one part of a painting was any more important than any other part. This was an attempt to escape the traditional Renaissance idea of a composition being critical to the understanding of a painting. Traditionally, the composition provided a guide to the viewer as to what was more or less important within a painting and therefore gave some clue as to how to read the painting and its hierarchic significance. At the same time, and with similar intentions, the Americans were using the term ‘all over painting’.
In both cases, whether non-hierarchic or all-over painting, the aim was to rid the work of any specific meaning that composition or hierarchy might bring to it thereby allowing it to exist, and be experienced, in its own right without external references.
Within my own practice the more ‘concrete’ works have been generated by numeric sequences and therefore have no intended hierarchic structure, their composition being pre-determined by the numeric system. However, when my work does contain a subject, then the composition is determined by the needs of that subject and the breadth and limitations of my own chosen visual language. As my experiences, imaginings and subjects have changed over time, so too has the composition / hierarchy of the work changed, or, as I would prefer to say ‘evolved’, hence the title of this exhibition ‘Evolving Hierarchies’.
-Andrew Christofides, 2024
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