Gina Birch, No One’s Little Girl at Gallery 46, Whitechapel, East London, December 2023  – Waited for the right moment to go see this one, the last very painterly Gina Birch show at this same rather beautiful space back during Frieze Week in October 2022 was rewarding in a rather defiantly strong punk-fuelled way (a little more than just punk-fuelled actually, there’s far more to Gina Birch than just her punk rock past). I imagine the opening night was busy, I imagine the days when talks or performances have been going on have been busy, Gina has a growing reputation as a serious painter, she is of course well known and much loved as a key part of challenging feminist punk band The Raincoats. 

Wanted to catch this one at a quiet time rather than during all the noise of the opening, wanted to walk in without any advance warning or bites of social media imagery, kind of expected something powerful and wow! Gina Birch has been very very busy since that last show here in the same gallery back in October 2022, This is immediate, this is bigger, bolder, her work as a painter has always been strong, always been challenging, always been forthright, it has always been exciting, right back to those wonderful shoe paintings that she showed at the back of a Hackney junk shop a dozen or so years ago and yes her paintings do look like the work of a Raincoat – the way we look at Gina Birch’s paintings can’t help but be informed by what we already know from her music and really there is no real divide here between the strident painter and the respected punk rock musician. But but but, there’s something more here and this 2023 Gallery 46 show feels like far more than her rather good 2022 show. Is she a more confident painter now? Is she happier to commit more to large canvases? Is there more being said? Revealed? Is happier the right term, not happier, not more confident, maybe more knowing, maybe a little more comfortable in her painting boots that she may have previously been and no, these don’t feel like happy paintings, they do feel like positive paintings though, cathartic maybe? They do feel like honest paintings, autobiographical? Nothing is ever too obvious, do like the twists and the turns, do like this show even more that last time, yes! Strange thing to say but I feel good oh her behalf!  

More than anything this is just a really powerfully exciting show of really strong paintings, a “wow” kind of show,  a challenge of a show. Last time around we said of her 2022 show that there was a feeling that she was experimenting, discovering, not so much finding her painterly voice but feeling she can start to visually shout using that voice. This time it feels like Gina Birch has spent a very positive productive exciting year producing some very powerful rather expansive paintings full of a lot more than just the attitude and energy you’d probably expect from her, this year there’s more of everything, there’s more depth, there more noise, there’s more attitude and more than that, one year on, there’s just something more. Gina Birch’s latest exhibition is just a very positive very exciting more. Excellent show. (sw)

Gallery 46 is found at 46 Ashfield Street, Whitechapel, London E1.  The show is open now and runs until December 16th, the gallery is open 1pm until 6pm, Tuesday through to Sunday.

Gina Birch on instagram

Previously on these pages….

ORGAN: Frieze week, Gina Birch at Whitechapel’s Gallery 46. There’s a feeling here that she’s experimenting, discovering, not so much finding her painterly voice but feeling she can start to visually shout…

Do as always, clcik on an image to enlarge or to run the fractured slide show.