Charles Avery

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); Zoo, Hat, Bridge, Tree: Architectural Propositions of Onomatopoeia, Vistamarestudio, Milan (IT).

Selected group exhibitions include You Must Change Your Life, curated by Tom Morton, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); The Drawing Biennale, The Drawing Room, London (UK); As Above, So Below, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (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); My World, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, Singer Museum, Laren, (NL); GLASSTRESS: Venetian Glass Today, Millesgården Museum, Lidingö (SE); 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 and institutional collections, including Tate, London (UK); National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (UK); Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (NL); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); Arts Council Collection, London (UK); The Government Art Collection (UK); FRAC Île-de-France, Paris (FR); KADIST Art Foundation, Paris (FR) and San Francisco, CA (US); Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main (DE); AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); The David and Indrė Roberts Collection, London (UK); THE EKARD COLLECTION; among others.