Art gets turbulent with Simon Birch
PUBLISHED September 27th, 2012 07:19 pm | UPDATED January 21st, 2016 08:42 am
There is something about artist Simon Birch’s figurative paintings that are decidedly arresting…
And later this week, we will have the opportunity to be mesmerized by 24 of them in his exhibition ‘Clear Air Turbulence’ opening at Gallery Reis.
One thing that is for sure is that his dramatic works have an amazing energy to them – and that’s just on screen. Imagine what the impact will be when you’re standing in front of them. Well soon you won’t have to just imagine!
A powerhouse of an artist based out of Hong Kong, who has received critical acclaim for his work, he is one motivated man who has so many strings to his bow, you will be forgiven for losing count. Having DJ-ed, created large scale installations, curated exhibitions, worked on exciting collaborations, overcome deadly cancer…we think he is rather an artistic force to be reckoned with! As we find out in our interview…
This is your second showcasing in Singapore – the first being  in 2007, Azhanti High Lightning at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, is it good to be back? What has changed since?
Very good to be back in Singapore. Ten years ago I used to be in Singapore DJ-ing at Zouk and other places almost every month and slowly as I transitioned from that world into visual art I continued to maintain a relationship with the place with all kinds of odd art projects. Sadly it has lapsed in recent years so it is really exciting to come back and show some work. I hope there will be more opportunities to come as I’ve always had such a love for Singapore.
Since the installation project at Nanyang, my career has exploded somewhat and I’ve built enormous installations, collaborative projects, painted furiously…it’s been a roller coaster that I’ve yet to get off! So nothing has changed it’s just become more…
This show focuses on the larges scale figuritve oil paintings for which you are widely known,  whereas some past shows saw you venturing into multimedia – how do you find yourself expressing yourself differently through the different mediums?
I think my generation, which has grown up in a digital age, absorbs and expresses itself in a breadth of mediums and one’s work is no longer limited to traditional formats. I’m as excited about film as I am about sculpture, hologram, digital media, photography and so on. It’s all so accessible now and affordable to use, it’s hard not to get inspired and carried away with the use of such tools. Of course at its heart, it’s all just a means to an end of expressing oneself visually, it’s all just paint.
But I do indeed have a foundation in the traditional, it doesn’t get more basic than painting and I guess it remains my first love and I’m never finished with exploring the subject and the medium. It is endlessly challenging and I feel I have much more to do with it. So for now, oil painting is my primary focus though ideas in other mediums are never far away. It’s definitely a challenge to be good in a variety of mediums, there’s a danger in dipping in and out so I try to divide my life into periods of focus purely on the medium in use for that particular project until it is thoroughly completed.
A few years ago you were diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of cancer – how did that affect your work as an artist? Do you think it has changed the way you express yourself through your art?
Well it has certainly given me license to discuss certain things in my work that I perhaps wouldn’t choose to have knowledge of. The experience of going through so much taught me much about love, pain, fear…it gave me a certain clarity. Though I don’t comment directly on that situation it has affected myself and my work profoundly and I approach panting with a new vigor and security. I feel empowered to attack the work more fearlessly, to take risks. Being so close to death was remarkably liberating, so for all the pain and discomfort, it was a positive experience and I feel charged with an energy that has led to, and will hopefully lead, to some substantial work.
Directly after recovering I built the installation project ‘Hope and Glory’ in Hong Kong (and then in Beijing). It remains the biggest and most successful (on audience numbers at 60,000) art project in HK history. So perhaps that is a measure of cancer’s effect on my output and ambition.
You’re interested in ideas of transition, the ambiguous moment between an initiation and a conclusion, the unobtainable now. How do you convey these notions through your works?
It should be obvious, figures caught in motion, that unobtainable moment forever frozen. Each breath we take is so perfect but once complete, it is lost forever and we are one breath closer to death. Each painting is that breath and is my fragile attempt at preserving it. It may seem melancholic but to me it is more romantic and sentimental. The works are often almost violent in the figures’ composition but this is ambiguous as the viewer is not party to the activity before or after the moment. I’ve always liked work that is at once violent but beautiful, whether in Caravaggio’s ‘Judith Beheading Holofornes’ or Deckard’s final violent exchange with Roy at the end of the film Blade Runner.
You have a strong passion for music – how does that influence your art?
Well as an ex-DJ I never lose that love of music, I listen all day to the radio, usually underground UK music shows, and I am still as hungry as ever for new music. I never understood that thing with the older generations that they stopped liking music after a certain period. Older people who still love music from the 60’s or 70’s or whatever and think it’s all gone downhill since then. Music now is so awesome! It’s odd how some people just stop being curious about the new.
What else inspires/influences you?
Everything! I’m such a cultural, social, historical, environmental sponge! I read heaps, travel heaps, and soak it all up!
What is your one big dream and how close are you to getting there?
I’m already there, living and working as an artist. My dream is beyond myself. I hate to go all hippy but my dream is for love and kindness and cleaning up this filthy planet. My dream is for the reboot of values in civilization, that we bring humanity back to sustainability, consideration, honesty and the pursuit of things that are of value; not money, glam, and personal gain at the expense of others, and vanity and this rigid, inflexible structure we’ve all bought into. Sorry, that must sound awfully naive and Utopian but you asked!
We’re quite bored of hearing people say ‘Singapore is boring/uncreative’. What is your take on that as an artist? What in your view needs to happen for people to better embrace their creative side here or appreciate Singapore’s creative talents?
We are all born artists, we just get distracted on the way. Sadly we are an insecure species so we do all kinds of things to bring us security that hold us back from who we really are. All we need to do is let people pursue the things they really want to, encourage creativity, whether it’s in art or astronomy. HK and Singapore suffer the same problem, expensive cities where insecure families push their kids to secure futures, ironically producing unhappy, dishonest (I don’t mean criminals I mean people living lives that are not what they wanted) people. The change has to come from education – both formal and familiar.
Singapore people are the same as anywhere else in the world, born creative. And Singapore is a beautiful and safe environment for people to flourish in. I don’t find it boring at all. It’s a young country since gaining independence and it’s small (though big as a city). One can’t expect it to rival old culture capitals like New York or Paris. It needs time to develop and culture comes organically, not overnight because you build art museums. I think Singapore is doing pretty darn well so far!
Anything else you’d like to say?
Just really looking forward to hanging out in Singapore again, it’s always so refreshing after Hong Kong. Thanks for taking an interest in me and my work. Hope you like the show!
