Artists: Sophie Birch - Rachel Youn

Figures of Speech delivers a ‘dialogue’ between Sophie Birch’s oil paintings and Rachel Youn’s kinetic sculptures. Both artists delve into the ways metaphor shapes meaning and mediate our sensory experiences, connecting visible and invisible forces.

Birch’s paintings examine the unseen forces that shape aural and tactile perception. One of her main investigations is around sound, where elements like the ear’s cochlea (which processes vibrations) and the lateral line (an animal hearing sensor) inspire her works. Her layered paintings are made through tactile marks, using time as a medium for transformation.

Youn’s kinetic sculptures confront the tension between pleasure and discomfort, using devices like massagers to examine the relation of function and desire. Their works use artificial flowers fake orchids to explore controlled beauty and apply mechanised touch to perform a labor of artificial ‘human-ness.’

Figures of Speech provides a framework for exploring how ‘language’, whether through vibration or pigment, can reveal more than it signals.

The following text imagines their works as voices speaking to each other: Rachel Youn’s kinetic sculptures as “FIGURES,” Sophie Birch’s paintings as “SPEECH.”

[Scene: Alice Amati gallery. The walls hang Sophie Birch’s oil paintings. The colors and layers pulse, barely contained. Nearby, Rachel Youn’s kinetic sculptures hum and whirr.They look at each other as if they want to "speak," and then they do.]

FIGURES:
(The orchids tap softly against the wall and then against each other)
Do you think my arms are too slow?
Can you see how they move, looping, always under control?
This is restraint. Are you restrained, too?

SPEECH:
Restraint? I am expansion!
(The paint marks look like speech bubbles, as if about to jump out)
Do you see this?

FIGURES:
Your movement stays stuck on your surface.
You gather light, but keep it trapped.
I pull, twist. I’m not afraid of moving.

SPEECH:
Do you think I’m trapped?
Each layer is time. Each one, a conversation.
Cochleas, cross-sections of ears—sound, vibration.
Can you hear what’s inside?

FIGURES:
I only hear the noise of my movements.

SPEECH:
And movement makes you alive?
Everything spins, but you’re lost in motion.
Look at me. I’m not afraid to stay in one place.

FIGURES:
(Moves like a possessed spirit)
Pink flowers, my body’s always blooming.
But you—You say you’re unafraid to stay still,
yet your paint betrays you! It breaks, reforms.

SPEECH:
I’ve got pinks in me, too.
I’ve got warmth, sunrise…

FIGURES:
You’re like a weather system!
I was a quick fix for their bodies,
until I wasn’t. I couldn’t replace a person,
so I became something else.

SPEECH:
My hearing center’s shifting—
becoming something else, too.
My marks ripple, like the skin of an amphibious.
I am ‘exploding,’ perhaps ‘flowering’,
like you—hard to say.

FIGURES:
Sit pretty, they say. Smile, be pleasant.
(Hips gyrating, accelerating)
I’ve been designed to perform.

SPEECH:
And I’ve been designed to perform
… the image of hearing.

FIGURES:
(Tendrils reaching out, like a swamp creature)
I look harmless—soft, like moss.
But I twist, I trap. I’m a shaking monster.

SPEECH:
Cover up! I see the lacquer tray under your skirt.
(Layers of paint become translucent)

FIGURES:
Do you see the milky plastic nodules beneath me?
(Creeping across the wall, insect-like)
Your chrysalis is peeling, too!

SPEECH:
There’s a flood of something!
Like the yolk of an egg spilling—
My body vibrates…sound waves, the swell of music…
Sirius! Starbells! Flames! Eyeballs! Webbing!
A sudden rush of something natural.

FIGURES:
That rush of artificial touch.
(performing the pressure of someone's fingers)
Resonance, vibration, eroticism!
Exhaustion, submission, servitude!
Simulation, exoticism, hysteria!
Objectification, obscurity, womanhood!
Tricks, traps, tradition… repetition!

SPEECH:
Allusion.
Illusion.
All of it.
Both of us.

Text by Vanessa Murrell