Charles Avery
Charles Avery (*1973) is a British artist working across a range of artistic media. Central to his practice are drawing, sculpture, installation, and text. In his approach, he is inspired by the early philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and understands his work as divided into two planes – the “atomic” and the “mystical.” The atomic dimension moves toward abstraction, structure, and an analytical grasp of the world, that is, toward what can be calculated or described in words. The mystical manifests itself in narrative, figurative drawings that open up a space for that which cannot be fully articulated or systematized. Wittgenstein described this phenomenon in his well known formulation in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Avery prefers these two dimensions of his practice to be understood in relation to one another, and deliberately brings them into tension, in which the rational construction of the world encounters that which cannot be fully expressed, but can be shown through image, narrative, or the organisation of a complex fictional world. Such an example, and at the same time the core of his work, is the long-term project The Islanders (since 2004), an encyclopedically conceived mapping of a fictional island and its inhabitants. This world gradually unfolds through drawings, texts, objects, and installations that capture its topography, culture, and mythology. The whole thus functions as a fictional model of the world, in which elements of mathematics, philosophy, economics, and literature intertwine, and which allows for an exploration of the very conditions of the emergence of meaning as well as the formation of ethical and aesthetic structures.
Charles Avery was born in Oban, Scotland, and lives and works in London and on the Isle of Mull. His work has been presented in a number of major institutions, including Parasol Unit in London, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, where his long-term project The Islanders was exhibited. In addition, he regularly exhibits with the galleries GRIMM and Ingleby. He has participated in international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (Scotland + Venice, 2007) and Planet B: Climate Change and the New Sublime, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud (Venice, 2022). His works are held in major public col lections, including Tate, the Arts Council England Collection, the National Galleries of Scotland, FRAC Île-de-France, and the Deutsche Bank Collection.
