NOTICE: This blog is now updated at simon-birch.com/blog

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Ugh.


I've been writing and editing content for a re-vamp of my website and in doing so, wandering through past projects, I realise what a huge amount of output there has been in my short career as an artist, which officially has only been around 10 years but off the record has been my whole life.
What also came up as I dug around previous paintings, projects and whatever else, is an enormous amount of work that went into projects that never happened. I've actually failed far more than i've succeeded. I guess that's what keeps me hungry and ambitious.
Here's a few examples ......

Friday 1 March 2013

Hooligan


It's been a hectic 6 months.
I've mostly been hiding away in my studio painting works for my new show which opens here in Hong Kong on April 10th.
It'll be held at a gallery called Ben Brown Fine Arts which is in Pedder Building in Central.
They are a London gallery who were the first big international gallery to come here and set up shop a couple of years ago. After them, Gagosian, White Cube and others have followed.
With ArtBasel taking over the HK art fair, there is a heck of a lot going on around here these days.
Most of this activity is commercial however, with not much going on locally, organically....yet!
This art activity is all imported but I'm sure with time we will see more and more art coming from HK, rather than to HK.

Anyway, myself and my partners are doing our bit by building a private art museum.
Some very generous friends donated a building to our little arts organisation, Future Industries, and between us we will manage the project.
It's right in the middle of Central HK and we plan to be open by the end of the year.
It's small by intenrational standards, perhaps only 8000sqft over 4 floors but it's pretty cute and in the most incredible location.
So we plan to bring in art from all over the world, vibrant, eclectic and cutting edge content. We are all keen on multi-media, risky, contemporary, energetic work, so we hope our space will be a little more edgy than things that can usually be seen in our more conservative institutions.
The space is called 'Kong'.

So with this and my show at Ben Brown, and another show at his London gallery too,  it's going to be a busy year.

Anyway, here's a few new works and when I get a minute I will go take some shots of the space which right now is a filthy industrial building. It will be quite a transformation.