Charles Avery

Over the course of two decades, Charles Avery has dedicated himself to a singular world-building project through the depiction of an imaginary island. Titled The Islanders, this extensive world-building project describes the formation of Avery’s fiction through a continually evolving body of interconnected works.

The Island at the centre of Avery’s constructed world is located on an archipelago. Its gateway is the town of Onomatopoeia, a highly textured metropolis that bears the hallmarks of an evolving urban landscape. Once a colonial outpost, the town transformed into a bustling metropolis, a depression-ravaged slum, and finally a regenerated city of culture and tourism.

The spirit of Avery’s imaginary Island is integrally connected with mathematics, philosophy, economics and anthropology, while drawing on literature and comedy. Key elements of the fictional world are rendered in physical forms through Avery’s sculptures and installations. As Avery has stated, the Island is “a gymnasium for the imagination”.

In 2024, Avery set The Islanders aside to begin a new project, which he refers to as The Eidolons. In this body of work, individual images and propositions give rise to new forms, creating what Avery describes as “a community of interrelated forms” and “a primitive universe of simple and numerable parts.” These new works provide a conceptual bridge between the polarising worlds of The Islanders and The Eidolons, connecting apparently discrete and incommensurate visions. While distinct in their structures and ambitions, both projects emerge from Avery’s sustained interest in constructing fictional systems through which drawing, sculpture, writing, and ideas
can intersect.

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.