Built up in veils of abraded colour, Sophie Birch’s layered compositions make visible their construction. She uses an array of implements – brushes, cloths, palette knives, sandpaper – to apply paint and scrape or grind it away until what remains are unstill records of addition and removal, revelation and obscurity, delicacy and force, thought and touch. Overlaid translucencies and textures appear like membranes between interior and exterior realms; their interactions producing moments of optical anomaly and disturbance, invoking stumbling fugue states, through which constellations of images merge and overlap.
Sophie Birch (b. 1992, Rustington, UK) currently lives and works in London. She studied at The Royal Drawing School and Wimbledon College of Art in London. Recent exhibition includes Panta Rhei, Alice Amati, London (2024); In Praise of Shadows, Melzi Fine Art, Milan (2024); A Painting Show, Staffordshire Street Gallery, London (2023); Fruit and French Windows, Calcio Gallery, London; felt cute, might delete later, Arusha Contemporary, London (2023); Hawthorn and the Feast of Julian, Arusha Contemporary, New York (2023); Nobody’s Home and Primeval, Unit 1 Gallery, London (2023.)
