Story of Simon Birch
People often ask about my inspirations and how I developed @the14thfactory. This is my story...
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I also made the move to become independent and formed a company with some smart people; Future Industries. A collector offered to back us with regular funding taking the equivalent value of art as a return. It was so exciting at first but became uncomfortable as the investor had his ideas about our direction which were at odds with ours.
We set up an office, employed a team, launched our first independent project, showing myself and the brilliant Prodip Leung of LMF fame, at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Science, a non-art space. We planned to build a big installation on the building, a virus-like expanding mass but couldn't get permission.
But regardless the show went really well and our newly formed independent arts organization was ready to take over the world.
But it was not to be as after only one year the investor pulled his support, claiming his value had gone down from a billion to only 900million, which meant special projects like me had to go.
It was a huge blow and left me with no funds to do anything with and no gallery to work with.
Back to starting from zero again.
