Charles Avery

Through his drawings, sculpture, paintings, installations and text, Charles Avery is telling the story about his fictional island and its inhabitants, their religion, culture, nature and architecture. His narrative is inspired by his childhood spent on the Isle of Mull off the West coast of Scotland which helped him to create a framework for his project The Islanders. His Island is located in the middle of the great archipelago. With the capital Onomatopoeia, this place is interesting cultural and tourist destination, thanks to the first settlers who built the metropolis. Avery actively works on his project since 2004. The first presentation of The Islanders: An Introduction was exhibited at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in London, 2008.

Onomatopoeia is interesting tourist destination

Welcome to Onomatopoeia

His recent focus is on the citizens of Onomatopoeia, creatures very similar to the humans. Drawing them in everyday situations in the cloth that doesn’t belong to any period of time or any culture, Avery represents the ahistorical and apolitical world, questioning the issues of globalization and utopia. In this mythic landscape live the different creatures who come out from their world into the real one in the form of sculptures. Mythical beasts haunt the inhabitants’ psyche, occupying their sense of reason. The salesman in the local market sells the pictures of the nude females for the price of peace of mind and the local specialty is the pickled eggs. All those dreamy characters come directly from Avery’s imagination in the moment of drawing.

The inhabitants are similar to humans

World Without the Squares

One more characteristic for the Islander’s is that they don’t like the number four and the right angles, so they sit on the three or five side tables because of more comfortable relations. He enjoys in the creation of the furniture for his imaginative world. Trying to constantly upgrade his ideas, there’s always something new happening, the city is developing and expanding. Avery hopes that The Islanders will be his life’s work with the culmination in the form of the encyclopedic book. With the ever present affection to the drawing, he found his models in Schiele, Daumier, Redon and Frank Lloyd Right and New Yorker cartoons. Predominantly self-taught as an artist, he went to Central St Martins school but dropped out after six months.

The sculptures are the souvenirs

Drawings vs Sculpture

Avery’s drawing skills and powerful imagination are clearly visible on his five meters wide drawing Untitled (View of the Port of Onomatopoeia). With the details focused on the center of the paper, he represents the group of strange inhabitants and the visitors who have arrived by boat. Very important for the understanding of his work is the relation between the drawings and the sculpture. The first ones are only the narratives, but sculptural things are the items that are sold to the tourists and therefore removed from their original context and put in reality, creating the connection between two worlds.

The Islanders have their own religion and culture

One Project for a Lifetime

Creating a unique mixture of the art mediums, permeating drawings, sculpture, painting and textual messages, Avery asserts his imagination in the attempt to make one different world. His characters have their own philosophy of living, their own culture, habits and rules. On the exhibitions, a broad selection of works is shown together offering the viewer to clearly comprehend topology and cosmology of the island. The Islanders project was a perfect way for the artist to direct his artistic ideas. Letting the narratives emerge, improvisation remained the main guide of his imaginative spirit.

Charles Avery lives and works in London.

All images © artist