Charles Avery has dedicated himself to a singular world-building project through the depiction of an imaginary island. The Islanders is a detailed portrayal of the inhabitants, topography, and culture of a fictional island, formed extensively through drawings, writings, objects, architecture and design.
Over the course of the twenty-year project, Avery’s imaginary world has been calibrated around 'The Island', the center of Avery's constructed world; located among an archipelago of innumerable constituents. The gateway to the Island is the town of Onomatopoeia, a highly-textured metropolis that bears the hallmarks of an evolving urban landscape. Once the stepping off point for the pioneers who first came, the town experienced rapid transformation from a colonial outpost, to boom town, bustling metropolis, depression-ravaged slum, and finally a regenerated city of culture and tourist destination. The culture and fabric of the Island continue to evolve, further illuminated with each successive work.
The spirit of Avery's imaginary Island is highly engaged with the disciplines and currency of mathematics, philosophy, economics, and anthropology, and he takes inspiration broadly from literature and comedy. Key elements from his drawings are rendered in physical form in his sculptures and installations. Instilled in many of the works is the central theme of the horizon line, a continuum that to the Islanders holds a magnetic attraction. It represents a conundrum: visible yet constituted of nothing, drawing them into an intangible enigma. As Avery has said, the Island is "a gymnasium for the imagination and an earnest attempt to align the experience of the viewer with that of the artist."
Charles Avery (b. 1973 in Oban, UK) lives and works in London and on the Island of Mull (UK). Selected solo exhibitions include The Eidolorama, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (UK); The Eidola, Pigs and Blades of the Inner Vast, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); The Nothing of the Day, GRIMM, London (UK); The Hunter returns / goes away from, GRIMM, Amsterdam, (NL); Zoo, Hat, Bridge, Tree: Architectural Propositions of Onomatopoeia, Vistamarestudio, Milan (IT); a wall, a bridge, an arch, a hat, a side-show, a square circle, a group of friends, and two one-armed snakes, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); The Taile of the One-Armed Snake, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL), 2020; and The Gates of Onomatopoeia, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (UK).
Selected group exhibitions include As Above, So Below, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (US); One Thing Touches Another, Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY (US); In Other Worlds: Acts of Translation, The Roberts Institute of Art, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (UK); A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now, curated by Tom Morton, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US); Size Matters | Monument Drawing Now, Museum MORE, Gorssel (NL); Positions, part three, Alma Pearl, London (UK); My World, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, Singer Museum, Laren, (NL); Self-Portraits, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); GLASSTRESS: Venetian Glass Today, Millesgården Museum, Lidingö (SE); Cubitt 30th Birthday Fundraising Exhibition, Victoria Miro, London (UK); Planet B. Climate Change and the New Sublime, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Palazzo Bollani, Venice (IT) and We, on the Rising Wave, Busan Biennale 2022, Busan (SK).
His work is part of numerous public collections, including AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Arts Council England Collection, London (UK); The David and Indrė Roberts Collection, London (UK); Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main (DE); THE EKARD COLLECTION; FRAC Île de France, Paris (FR); The Government Art Collection (UK); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); KADIST Art Foundation, Paris (FR); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh (UK) and Tate Modern, London (UK), among others.