About

Simon Birch is a British-born contemporary figurative painter, of Armenian descent. He paints in his studio in Bangkok, Thailand, while developing The 14th Factory in London, opening in October 2027.

Working with oil on canvas, Birch has also ventured into film and installation, culminating in large-scale immersive projects including the 20,000 square foot multimedia installations HOPE & GLORY: A Conceptual Circus (2010) and Daydreaming With… The Hong Kong Edition (2012) at ArtisTree, TaiKoo Place, Hong Kong, and The 14th Factory (Los Angeles, 2017; London). These projects integrate paintings with film, installation, sculpture and performance, housed in specifically configured spaces.

Birch is interested in universal ideas of transition: the ambiguous moment between an initiation and a conclusion, the unobtainable now, and the future inevitably crashing towards us. For Birch these ideas translate easily from oil paint to film to installation, engaging with myth, history, circus and science fiction, connection and disconnect. He explores these themes in an enveloping environment of theatre and spectacle, where viewing becomes experiential: overwhelming and complex, yet, as spectacle and adventure, also approachable.

He has had solo shows in Beijing, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Miami and Singapore, and has exhibited in group shows at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Haunch of Venison, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. His work has been featured and reviewed in international publications including Artforum, The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, Time Out and The New York Times.