enrich each other considerably. When an ambitious project of such a scale comes to us full pelt in all directions, we are forced to reckon with our instincts: our fears, our passions, our reactive emotions, our flight or fight. An aesthetic intervention is precisely that, something that enters our space (as we enter theirs) and brings us to an altered state of being extraordinarily alive. All art should aspire to have this energy, this spirit."

Simon Birch explains, “It’s a great opportunity to curate at a space such as this. To be able to execute the freedom of my imagination in such an impressive gallery is very exciting. The theme for the show is about sudden and unexpected change, change that has a lasting affect on the individual or an entire culture. It is about evolution and inevitability. I believe the theme also has much resonance in contemporary Asian society and universally in the life of the individual.”

The exhibition will consist of seven distinct areas housed within the main 50-meter long gallery at NAFA (combining both galleries 1 & 2). To achieve this, the artist has fabricated what can be described as a film set. Within the gallery space is a series of interlocking rooms ranging in size from a few meters square to the largest being 81-meters square and 4.2-meters tall, and displays ranging from sculpture, live performance, a 360 degree film theatre, paintings and photography.

Please refer to Annex 3 for images (high-resolution file for these images are available upon request).

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with NEC, Helutrans Artmove and 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. NEC is sponsoring the use of its projectors to put on view the visual dynamics intrinsic to the fast paced, ultra sensitive concept of the works, while Helutrans Artmove is sponsoring the local handling and freight movement.

10 Chancery Lane Gallery is a supporting organisation in this project through funding and administration in Hong Kong, and represents the

The Singapore Arts Festival is one of the leading international arts festivals known for its bold and innovative artistic collaborations at the cutting-edge of contemporary arts with a distinctive Asian flavour. Established as a national celebration for the arts, the Festival offers a myriad showcase of world-class and internationally-acclaimed arts productions, and has a strong trademark for presenting several world and Asian premieres. The Festival turns 30 and sees its 21st edition this year. In the last 30 years, it has played a catalytic and strategic role in developing audiences, professionalising arts practice, spawning new interests and creating spin-offs for the arts.

ANNEX 1

Simon Birch

Born in Brighton in 1969, Birch began painting at a very early age under the guidance of his parents. His mother is an accomplished painter and art teacher and his father is a graphic and interior designer. Birch moved to Hong Kong in 1996 where he eventually took up a professional career as an artist. He is now well established as a leading Hong Kong contemporary artist who is fast building a reputation internationally as both a painter and a multi-media artist with his finger on the pulse of street culture.

Chosen as winner of 2004’s Schoeni Asian Art Award by the Sovereign Group, Simon is known for his painting, in particular his portraits, which have drawn much attention due to a number of high-profile commissions. He has also held a series of extremely successful solo exhibitions in the past few years as well as finding time to curate one of Hong Kong’s largest group shows with over 30 artists involved. He has equally become a target of speculation with his graffiti projects around the city of Hong Kong, and his exciting collaborative works with designers and photographers.

His current projects include not only curating the inaugural exhibition at the new 10 Chancery Lane Warehouse space in Hong Kong, but also a large-scale collaborative project with photographer Wing Shya and Japanese fashion brand Evisu - a solo exhibition with a substantial number of commissioned works.


Wing Shya

Wing Shya is a Hong Kong-based photographer who works in the field of fashion, film and art. He started his career as a graphic designer after having studied at the Emily Carr Institute in Canada. He also worked with Pentagram in The United States. Upon his return to Hong Kong, Wing set up Shya-la-la Workshop, an award-winning design studio.

Wing’s works have been exhibited in the Mori Museum in Japan. He is also the exclusive photographer and graphic designer for Wong Kar Wai’s films that included ‘Happy Together’, ‘In the Mood for Love’ and ‘2046’. Wing also contributes to numerous international fashion and art magazines such as iD(UK), French Vogue, 32c (Berlin), Big Magazine (US), More or Less (Japan), Men's Non-No (Japan) and recently in TIME Style and Design (Spring 2005). He has also worked with clients including Louis Vuitton (Fall 2003+Spring 2005 Editorial), Lacoste (Fall 2002+Spring 2003), Christophe Lemaire (Fall 2003), A Bathing Ape (Japan), Tiger Beer (International Campaign), Hennessy V.S.O.P. 2005, Nike (Asia Women's Wear 2005) and Dior Skin Care (Asia 2005).

Aside from photography, Wing is also a recognized director. He has directed several music videos for artists such as Karen Mok, Eason Chan, Jacky Cheung and Vanessa Mae. He has also worked on TV commercials with brands including Tiger Beer, Sony and Olympus. He has just held his own exhibition in March 2006 in Roppongi Hills in Japan and is in the process of further collaboration with other organizations.

ANNEX 2

Azhanti High Lightning: Rudiments of Life and Death

“In reality, as soon as each hour of one’s life has died, it embodies itself in some material object...and hides there. There it remains captive, captive forever, unless we should happen on the object, recognise what lies within, call it by its name, and set it free.” Marcel Proust, Prologue, Contre Sainte- Beuve

“..did not obscure...the simulacra (that) reason forwarded to the imagination, it in turn for safer preservation, surrendered them to memory, now in their purest form... offering to fantasy occasion to release its many images.” Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz, El Sueno (First I Dream)

Conceived by the artist Simon Birch not longer than 13 months before, this extraordinary vessel contains a visionary environment of chance, change and consequence. Vaulted in seven portals through which visitors make passage, this voyage challenges all bodily senses to take flight, using no map but that found within their variable human experience. The course is as steady as blood finding its way through veins; but incandescently sublime as a vaporised star retreating into an unknown blackness that frames yet another window within our universe.

Welcome aboard Azhanti High Lightning... ...

Using the analogy of a ship hurtling through time and space, Simon Birch presents a fantastic journey longing for itself through a carriage of symbols and moving imagery. Multiple media is designed to challenge the senses, by offering an experiential onslaught not unlike life’s events swirling daily around us, sometimes vague, sometimes vivid. We recall Proust as the vague and vivid collide – when a contemporary occurrence ploughs blindly into our existence, shouts something out by name and sets it free. The release is a consequence of change, perhaps an inexplicable transformation in the way we think, do and act.

Paradigm shifts are borne aloft the catastrophic, like natural disasters – but in ordinary life, perhaps they are more likely drifted into with the unexpected.

Captured in seven reminiscences that Birch has based on birth, the education process, the rapturous sensibility of love, a rite of military passage, the equilibrium of justice followed by regression and subsequently death, the spaceship Azhanti High Lightning reminds that civilisation is a dynamic continuum, whether we move forward or backward. It is a space-ship of the interim, the curious and unreal of a universal movie-set, offering solace in the somewhat familiar but sensuous unknown. As Sor Juana offers above, symbols and moving images when surrendered unto the memory, remain pure and un-assailed by the real world as it were. Imagination, fuelled by this physical adventure, inflames with the passionate rebirth of who we are, shaped by our pasts, altered by our presents and rendered unpredictable by our futures.

This space where past, present and future resides is an archive of reflection where we intern a recognisable glimpse into a well worn parchment of truth. The catalogue of ideas re-invents the realm of possibilities several times over, like the cross references of infinite and unknown authors.

Birch contemplates the forces of human civilisation through change and challenge. He uses the contemporary media of film, photography and installation to simulate an inimitable sequence of aesthetic discovery inevitably rooted in our souls. It is inside us that we are soon to discover how, what and why we exist and make our journeys with a constant hunger for the furthest horizon.

This latter day work of art reaps the essence of technology to mirror the mechanical yet virtual connections that drive the human body and its sentient being. But contrary to the modernity offered by such means, as Egon Schiele contends, art cannot be modern. Art is eternally primordial.

Through the door before us are the atonement of loss and the burden of knowing. They charge the ancients with the burst of the first fire and the embers of innumerable changes, where from the ashes, we are promised we will discover our wings.

And so we take flight.