Charles Avery, The Islanders: An Introduction, Buchhandlung Walther Konig GmbH & Co. KG. Abt. Verlag, 2009.
"I first came to the Island at the end of the great kelp rush, although I
was not aware of that at the time. On the contrary, I had sought out
this strange land with a view to being its discoverer."
So begins Charles Avery's The Islanders: An Introduction. The Islanders is, on one hand, a book, a fictional travelogue which catalogues a place called 'The Island' as encountered by the book's narrator. On the other, it is the first part of Avery's lifetime project, documenting the first four years of the Scottish artist's magnum opus.
The project itself is composed of large scale drawings, maps, sculpture, taxidermic specimens, and even a 3-D computer generated model of the Island (though Avery sees the latter "as a tool for me to use", rather than an artwork in itself). The objects and artifacts of The Islanders can be seen in gallery exhibitions such as the 2009 Tate Triennial Altermodern or the more recent British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet. And of course, they are documented in this book.
But The Islanders is more than an exhibition catalogue or archive of the artist's work: It is a fictional world of Avery's imagination, an altermodern archipelago, a new and unknown territory.
Having found the Island, the narrator prepares to leave, untying his boat, but is startled by a strange noise. Coming towards him is a beguiling young woman with whom he falls in love. The prologue concludes, "Through a series of misunderstandings, I came to believe her name was Miss Miss, and she, that I was called Only McFew. Miss Miss was to become my close companion and sponsor on the Island - although she consistently and firmly resisted any further advances. I remain to this day her devoted admirer."
Staying on the Island, perhaps because of love, perhaps because of curiousity and a calling to hunt and explore, Only McFew becomes familiar with the Island's inhabitants and its myths, as documented in the book. As readers, we learn about the various parts of the island such as the Avenue of the Gods, a lively market or bazaar; we're told of the prestigious role of the Hunter in Island society; we're introduced to the Island's peculiar (and strangely real) Gods; and we hear legends about its uncanny and surreal creatures.
In many ways, The Islanders is a conceptual exercise. It's about creating something and somewhere, it's about representation, its boundaries and its limitlessness. Even so, the book is strangely absorbing, and this is down to the detailed execution of Avery's drawings. They are undeniably masterful; the expressions on the faces of the Island's inhabitants, the Island and it's people's otherly familiarity...
...It's quite simply compelling... and intriguing. I am genuinely curious about what Avery will think up next for this imagined realm.
Interestingly, Avery seems to predict this. In an episode about the hunting and killing of an Aleph (a creature of the Island), Avery offers the following illustration:
The illustration depicts two 'Triangleland Bourgeoisie studying the head of an Aleph'. 'Triangleland' is the name for the other world - reality, in other words. Implicitly, then, there is an art gallery context being inscribed here, as though Avery is implying our own complicity in the project, the fact that the Island, however fictional, is something we lay witness to in his exhibitions.
The project continues with Onomatopoeia: The Port (which I subsequently blog about here), but in the meantime, Avery concludes The Islanders with a tantalising direct address: "I cannot tell you how this world really is - I have no idea - I can state only the facts as I perceive them. You must be satisfied with this or you must travel there yourself sometime, and see these beings in their natural environment, for this place is utterly subjective".
So begins Charles Avery's The Islanders: An Introduction. The Islanders is, on one hand, a book, a fictional travelogue which catalogues a place called 'The Island' as encountered by the book's narrator. On the other, it is the first part of Avery's lifetime project, documenting the first four years of the Scottish artist's magnum opus.
The project itself is composed of large scale drawings, maps, sculpture, taxidermic specimens, and even a 3-D computer generated model of the Island (though Avery sees the latter "as a tool for me to use", rather than an artwork in itself). The objects and artifacts of The Islanders can be seen in gallery exhibitions such as the 2009 Tate Triennial Altermodern or the more recent British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet. And of course, they are documented in this book.
But The Islanders is more than an exhibition catalogue or archive of the artist's work: It is a fictional world of Avery's imagination, an altermodern archipelago, a new and unknown territory.
Having found the Island, the narrator prepares to leave, untying his boat, but is startled by a strange noise. Coming towards him is a beguiling young woman with whom he falls in love. The prologue concludes, "Through a series of misunderstandings, I came to believe her name was Miss Miss, and she, that I was called Only McFew. Miss Miss was to become my close companion and sponsor on the Island - although she consistently and firmly resisted any further advances. I remain to this day her devoted admirer."
Staying on the Island, perhaps because of love, perhaps because of curiousity and a calling to hunt and explore, Only McFew becomes familiar with the Island's inhabitants and its myths, as documented in the book. As readers, we learn about the various parts of the island such as the Avenue of the Gods, a lively market or bazaar; we're told of the prestigious role of the Hunter in Island society; we're introduced to the Island's peculiar (and strangely real) Gods; and we hear legends about its uncanny and surreal creatures.
In many ways, The Islanders is a conceptual exercise. It's about creating something and somewhere, it's about representation, its boundaries and its limitlessness. Even so, the book is strangely absorbing, and this is down to the detailed execution of Avery's drawings. They are undeniably masterful; the expressions on the faces of the Island's inhabitants, the Island and it's people's otherly familiarity...
...It's quite simply compelling... and intriguing. I am genuinely curious about what Avery will think up next for this imagined realm.
Interestingly, Avery seems to predict this. In an episode about the hunting and killing of an Aleph (a creature of the Island), Avery offers the following illustration:
The illustration depicts two 'Triangleland Bourgeoisie studying the head of an Aleph'. 'Triangleland' is the name for the other world - reality, in other words. Implicitly, then, there is an art gallery context being inscribed here, as though Avery is implying our own complicity in the project, the fact that the Island, however fictional, is something we lay witness to in his exhibitions.
The project continues with Onomatopoeia: The Port (which I subsequently blog about here), but in the meantime, Avery concludes The Islanders with a tantalising direct address: "I cannot tell you how this world really is - I have no idea - I can state only the facts as I perceive them. You must be satisfied with this or you must travel there yourself sometime, and see these beings in their natural environment, for this place is utterly subjective".
Charles Avery,Onomatopoeia: The Port, Buchhandlung
Walther Konig GmbH & Co. KG. Abt. Verlag, 2010.
Onomatopoeia: The Port is the next phase in Charles Avery's Islanders project (launched with The Islanders, discussed here).
The Prologue to this second book opens exactly as did the first: " I
first came to the Island at the end of the great kelp rush..."
Initially, Onomatopoeia's Prologue appears identical, but subtle variations start to arise, until eventually, the narrative becomes wholly original.
As readers, you could start with this book. However, the new additional narrative relies on readers' memory of details from The Islanders in order to unlock some of its narrative intricacies. For instance, towards the end of the Prologue, our narrator Only McFew informs us that as he began to explore the port of Onomatopy on the Island, he "exercised my new status as a tourist by standing in line to purchase a poke of moules and two eggs from Marcel's Casserole". Ordinarily, this is not particularly surprising information. Yet readers of The Islanders are aware of the infamy of the Island's eggs: In The Islanders, we learn that they are branded Henderson's eggs, and are "bitterly disgusting, yet ruinously addictive". The most any one can eat is three apparently, before they are "completely hooked". Indeed, Avery writes, "Many of the prospectors who came to the Island during the kelp rush did not prosper, but instead found ruin in the form of the eggs". Thus, at the end of Onomatopoeia's Prologue, when the narrative ends with the words, "I bit into my second egg", those readers who know of the eggs' power interpret the sense of foreboding these words contain, and the slippery downfall for Only McFew at which they hint...
After the Prologue, Onomatopoeia really consists of Avery's stunning illustrations. It opens with a reproduction of Avery's large scale drawing of the port of Onomatopoeia (which featured in British Art Show 7).
Since the original image is so large, the subsequent illustrations are essentially close-ups of areas of this initial picture, allowing the reader/viewer to really admire the detail of Avery's drawings.
Finally, echoing the structure of The Islanders, Onomatopoeia concludes with an Epilogue. As the final words of the Prologue implied, all is not rosey for Only McFew who states that he is "profoundly lost". He tries to write an inventory to keep his mind sharp, detailing the contents of his bag as well as "Self: I am called Only McFew (really!)" - Incidentally, this is troubling since this is the name Miss Miss understood, and seems unlikely to be the narrator's real name. In itself, this raises all sorts of questions for the reader concerning Only McFew's state of mind and well-being.
Enigmatically, the Epilogue to Onomatopoeia ends, "And finally I have started to wonder if, beyond the shops and bars and lights of Onomatopy, beyond the Plane of the Gods, where the defunct machines and litter are strewn, underneath the mountains and the flowers and the dust and the bones of the hunters, there is an island at all?"- Alison Gibbons
As readers, you could start with this book. However, the new additional narrative relies on readers' memory of details from The Islanders in order to unlock some of its narrative intricacies. For instance, towards the end of the Prologue, our narrator Only McFew informs us that as he began to explore the port of Onomatopy on the Island, he "exercised my new status as a tourist by standing in line to purchase a poke of moules and two eggs from Marcel's Casserole". Ordinarily, this is not particularly surprising information. Yet readers of The Islanders are aware of the infamy of the Island's eggs: In The Islanders, we learn that they are branded Henderson's eggs, and are "bitterly disgusting, yet ruinously addictive". The most any one can eat is three apparently, before they are "completely hooked". Indeed, Avery writes, "Many of the prospectors who came to the Island during the kelp rush did not prosper, but instead found ruin in the form of the eggs". Thus, at the end of Onomatopoeia's Prologue, when the narrative ends with the words, "I bit into my second egg", those readers who know of the eggs' power interpret the sense of foreboding these words contain, and the slippery downfall for Only McFew at which they hint...
After the Prologue, Onomatopoeia really consists of Avery's stunning illustrations. It opens with a reproduction of Avery's large scale drawing of the port of Onomatopoeia (which featured in British Art Show 7).
Since the original image is so large, the subsequent illustrations are essentially close-ups of areas of this initial picture, allowing the reader/viewer to really admire the detail of Avery's drawings.
Finally, echoing the structure of The Islanders, Onomatopoeia concludes with an Epilogue. As the final words of the Prologue implied, all is not rosey for Only McFew who states that he is "profoundly lost". He tries to write an inventory to keep his mind sharp, detailing the contents of his bag as well as "Self: I am called Only McFew (really!)" - Incidentally, this is troubling since this is the name Miss Miss understood, and seems unlikely to be the narrator's real name. In itself, this raises all sorts of questions for the reader concerning Only McFew's state of mind and well-being.
Enigmatically, the Epilogue to Onomatopoeia ends, "And finally I have started to wonder if, beyond the shops and bars and lights of Onomatopy, beyond the Plane of the Gods, where the defunct machines and litter are strewn, underneath the mountains and the flowers and the dust and the bones of the hunters, there is an island at all?"- Alison Gibbons
„The Islanders:
An Introduction was the
latest instalment in Scottish artist Charles Avery's epic project which began
in 2004. For the first time, the whole project thus far was brought together
including several new works. Avery has created texts, drawings, installations
and sculptures which describe the topology and cosmology of an imaginary
island, whose every feature embodies a philosophical proposition, problem or
solution. Imbued with a formal beauty, humour, and a spirit of philosophical
enquiry, these vivid and intricate works invite the viewer to recreate the
Island in their own minds, and to use it as an arena for exploring
philosophical conundrums and paradoxes.
Since 2004 Avery has been describing, in
forms of drawings, texts, and objects, a fictional Island. The Island is
located at the centre of an archipelago of innumerable constituents. For the
exhibition at Grimm Gallery, Avery presents new works that explore as yet
entirely undepicted features of the Island.
The show takes you through several parts of
the Island, for example: The gateway to the Island is the town of Onomatopoeia, once the
stepping off point of the pioneers who first came to the place, turned colonial
outpost, turned boom town, bustling metropolis, depression ravaged slum, and
regenerated city of culture and tourist destination. Then there is The Jadindagadendar, the name
of the municipalpark of Onomatopoeia. On show will be several specimens of the
flora, including a ‘weeping’ tree of over four meters in height and a
meticulous architectural study of the tree, demonstrating the pure mathematical
system which gives rise to its form. And there is The Qoro-Qoros: the given
name of the near endless, miasmic network of windless mounds and pools which
separates the Island from its colonial master, the state known as Triangland. A
spectacular four meter drawing depicts three individuals attempting to navigate
monotonous wilderness.“
„For the past four years Charles Avery has been documenting his impossibly detailed ‘discoveries’ of a new world. ‘The islanders; an introduction’ initiates the curious into this world, led by the Chinese whisper of fantastical imaginings. Avery, self-appointed explorer, cosmologist and archaeologist, presents his findings through drawings, installation, sculpture and accompanying text.
1/4 size maquette of the eternity chamber’, one of the sculptures within the project, is a physical realisation of his imaginings, which allows the audience to visualise a section of the islander’s world. A hexagonal vessel walled inside by mirrored glass, illuminated by a rainbow spectrum of lights in the ceiling and floor, chequered like that of a Victorian tiled parlour. A door is left slightly ajar; as to let the audience peer into the booth, with a repeated pattern of their face staring back. The shrunken size of the ‘chamber’, could possibly allow the audience to feel more of an affinity to the idea of this chamber, giving one space to imagine it in its full size, being enclosed within it, to have faith in its ‘power’. It is explained by Avery that an outside tribe of the islanders believe in the ‘teachings’ of a gull, believed to be an incarnation of an unworldly being, named ‘meduso’. Images of gulls adorn the outside walls of the prism, and nearby a large drawing presents ‘the palace of the gulls’, where the eternity chamber is housed, atop a cliff facing the sea.
The symmetry, pattern and embellishment of the two structures, resembles that of middle eastern architecture, specifically a mosque or temple, coupled with the thought of inhabitants flocking to become “like the man” presumably that of the demi-god of ‘meduso’ mentioned in the accompanying text. Though rather than drawing devoted believers, Avery characterizes his worshippers as outsiders, striving for the eternal life promised by the few seconds spent within the chamber. ‘A trio smoking minutes before entering the eternity chamber’ (pencil and gauche) depicts, with Avery’s familiar precise draftmanship, the hallowed interior as a dark, dirty and foreboding place, with queues for the shining and auspicious eternity booth. The outsider’s look as though they are dispossessed people taking turns in the eternity chamber to keep warm; there is no sense of occasion or excitement, and gives a distinct impression that the artist is using his world of fantasy as a satirical mirror to our own society.
The project itself does not prompt me to wander upon the shores of this world and its islanders, as I have more than enough information presented to describe it and these leads to no space for speculation. Though it does lead me to wonder upon the avid documenter himself, and how he wants his work to be perceived. He presents himself as a character, the fictional explorer, and I find it curious; the schizophrenic nature of artist and explorer, onlooker and controller, the obsessive character himself, and whether he wants to satirise our on world through his. The engineered quality of Avery’s collection deems the project constricting in its academic nature, and with the weighty force of Avery’s masked intentions looming large in the background, it becomes a shadow over the beautifully engaging constructions of his imagination.
It is said that Avery is one of a new generation of artists practising under the brand “Altermodern”, meaning “Art made now in response to a global society and as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism.”
Outsider artist Chris Hipkiss addresses such issues, a passionate environmentalist and prolific visionary, his large-scale pencil drawings also bearing resemblance to Avery’s graphic and meticulous depictions.
Hipkiss’s work mirrors our own planets influence of industry upon nature, though through his beautiful and strange post apocalyptic visions of agricultural landscape, peppered with alien army’s of workers and overshadowed by curious mechanical structures. The ground in which Hipkiss has been placed; outsider art, is due to the fact he has no formal art training; no education after 16, and the illustrational and almost naive quality of his drawings. In conjunction with this and the repeated subjects of his work inform and arouse the curiosity of the audience into his psychological tensions, seemingly spilling onto the paper. Avery’s islanders are, while being intriguing and engaging creations, held to ransom by the constricting justifications of the artist.
With a project of such scale, the audience could participate in unearthing the relationships between the assorted pieces, how they interact and overlap, though with ‘the islanders..’ it seems the reading of the text may decelerate the coherence of the collection, dividing rather than bringing together his vision. Philosophical propositions and extensive explanations accompanying each piece could lead the audience to prioritise their time in absorbing the information presented, with the physical works becoming pushed to a secondary level of concentration. This is unfortunate for his sculptures, as they struggle to achieve the magical sentiment has scope to. It is obvious from Avery’s prolific nature that he plans to publish ‘The islanders’ inside an encyclopaedia upon conclusion, and one may wonder that the ‘research element’ may gain more attraction within this format. Avery’s inventive capacity is no doubt remarkable and his variety of work entirely alluring, while his intellectual rigor may overwhelm the project and its capacity to engage, and pivots upon the audience’s willingness to comprehend.“ - Lotti V. Closs
„There are few artists brave enough to play God, but Charles Avery has no problems on that score. Over the last 10 years he has been building an island and painstakingly documenting its inhabitants, landscape and cosmology in text, paint and sculpture. The premise could be straight out of Tolkien, except that Avery is much more sophisticated than that. His world is populated with mythical beasts that haunt the inhabitants' psyche, decrying their very nature and usurping their sense of reason.
Many of the natives are addicted to the local delicacy, pickled eggs, which enslaves them to the island. Hunters in tweed jackets and shotguns search out a Kantian dichotomy while hawkers in the local flea market sell pictures of nude women for the price of peace of mind.
All this would be academic if it wasn't for Avery's skilled draftsmanship. His pictures are so compelling it is impossible not to become embroiled in the life of this secret community.
Born in Oban in 1973, Avery grew up on the Isle of Mull, and there is no question that his childhood haunts this epic narrative. His new show is an anthropological survey of island life. Like a 19th-century explorer returning from a fact-finding mission, he offers the intrepid viewer a sampling of the many curious species and social customs he has experienced.
Why we like him: For a dodgy dealer called Mr Impossible, a platypus looking chancer who got himself elevated to demi-god status.
Any similarities?: He managed to get kicked out of Central St Martins after six months – a feat thought to be impossible.
Move over YBA: He is part of a new generation of artists practicing under the banner of Altermodern.
In his epic charting of the life and times of an imaginary island Avery has approached his subject like an explorer, recording the topography, history and culture of the place. But his role, like that of the artist, is ambiguous. While in awe of his subject, he also shares something in common with the island colonisers who hunt down wild, mythical beasts, kill them and pose for the camera with their quarry.
While this show, part of an endeavour begun in 2004, brings together the on-going project for the first time and includes new works, Avery insists he has no deadline: ‘Finishability is a moot point here,’ he says. Aside from the scale of the project, Avery’s ability to turn his hand to several disciplines, including drawing, sculpture and taxidermy, is impressive.
In the prologue to the show an unnamed narrator writes, ‘I had sought this strange land with a view to beings its discoverer.’ So begins a journey that is a feast for the eyes and a serious workout for the imagination. The island and its inhabitants come to life as we progress around the exhibits, from collected souvenirs and keepsakes via elaborate maps brimming with references to philosophical conundrums, to accomplished drawings and sculptures. Avery’s cast of characters is extensive, among them a group of steely-eyed fishermen, some fantastical beasts such as the Noumenon, a pantheon of gods (two headless fighting dogs joined at the neck; a tiny lovable duck-billed creature in a white tux and top hat called Mr Impossible). Gradually, a narrative takes shape and the cast of characters becomes so vivid it feels like we are watching scenes from a movie. ‘Film is my most important cultural medium,’ agrees Avery. ‘The characters in The Island are similar to a Coen Brothers film in the way [the Coens] favour the same actors from film to film.’
„Visitors to the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis would have had plenty to keep them occupied: eating a newly invented ice-cream cone, or walking among the ‘parade of human progress’ of the human zoo. Here you could find replica villages of the indigenous people of Congo or New Guinea, or the tribes of the new American territory of the Philippines, including the dog-eating Igorots, who created countless rumours of missing pets across the city. You would not have been surprised, then, to find a stall nearby detailing with text, sketches and sculptural curiosities the views and inhabitants of a distant land known simply as ‘The Island’. Witness a taxidermied Ridable, a beast with the stature of a llama, the face of a dog and chicken’s feet. Marvel in disgust at a jar of the highly addictive local snack of Henderson’s boiled eggs pickled in gin. Or hear of the Islander’s most popular tourist attraction, the Plane of the Gods, where living Island deities can be visited.
Standing alongside, sporting a safari hat, awkwardly holding a rifle in one hand and a leather-bound travel guide in the other, you might find The Island’s creator, Charles Avery. At Parasol Unit, he presents ‘The Islanders: An Introduction’, an anthropological museum of his findings, bringing together several smaller exhibitions since 2004, when he began work on his imaginary territory. A mixture of Cairo, New York and Avery’s own childhood home on the Scottish isle of Mull, the Island is peopled by faint, tetchy-looking women and gruff, wizened men who occupy a world where there is no distinction between imaginary and physical reality. Taking a range of philosophical theories as guidelines, Avery has created a sort of metaphysical ant farm. On the map of the mirrored archipelago that forms his world, clever puns abound: the Analitic Ocean, Cape Conchious-Ness, the Causeway of Effect. The noumenon – Immanuel Kant’s concept, which describes an unknowable thing that cannot be observed with the senses but only conceived of or believed in – is here a debated beast whose existence is unconfirmed but for which the Island’s hunters relentlessly search.
Wall texts describe this society’s paradigms, cults, creatures and places. Large drawings and physical artefacts accompany each text, fleshing out The Island as a vibrant place of constantly shifting existence, but the incessant dialectic of which inevitably seems to arrive at an existential stalemate. The drawings are unfinished, erratic in the precise minutiae they focus in on, as if excerpts from Avery’s ethnographic notebook. The black and white drawing Untitled (Place of the Route of the If’en) (2007) depicts a busy market scene, with peddlers of watches, second-hand junk and geometric sculptures selling their wares to an indifferent crowd. Like William Hogarth or George Cruikshank’s bustling street scenes, there is a distinct sense of alienation, highlighted further by his characters’ detailed, emotive faces, whose grim caricature recalls more contemporary illustrators such as Daniel Clowes. The installation Untitled (Diagram of the Plane of the Gods) (2006) produces in miniature the the Islanders’ bizarre pantheon, including two headless dogs joined at the neck in endless tug-of-war and a small creature called Mr Impossible, who resembles an aristocratic, duck-billed version of Guns ’n’ Roses guitarist Slash.
The gods, however, like everything else on The Island, are a profane embodiment of abstract concepts. Take, for example, Mr Impossible, who was deemed a god by a trio of drunken philosophers, arguing that owing to his ridiculous physique he was ‘highly improbable’ and ‘therefore he is essential’. The role of philosophy as status-giver in Avery’s project is telling. The drawing Untitled (Avatars) (2006) shows the interior of a shop full of The Island’s small creatures, both mythical and mundane, apparently being sold as personal avatars. The endowing act of creating an avatar pervades his world, each aspect of The Island an emblematic transcription or one-to-one analogy of some philosophical tenet. This endowment extends to our guide’s own choice of presentation, using the museum set-up to provide us with a static portrait of this foreign place. The philosophy of this exhibition is meant to be an exhaustive epistemology, a summary of characteristics presented to us with an air of finality and predetermined readings. Despite humorous moments in Avery’s writing and the seething life of his drawings, it at times feels like a cross between the obsessive detail of the Klingon Dictionary (1985) and the fictionalized ‘Philosophy 101’ of Sophie’s World (1991). As a result, The Island does not feel like a living place we can imaginatively inhabit. Like the badger-esque King in Exile (2008), this is a stuffed and preserved presentation. Rather than taking part in his explorative creation, we are forced to rely on the artist’s numerous explanatory texts, which relegate the visual elements of the show to pure illustration. Chris Fite-Wassilak
„Parasol
unit is delighted to present The Islanders: An Introduction, the latest
instalment in Charles Avery's epic project which began in 2004. For the past
four years, Scottish artist Avery has created texts, drawings, installations
and sculptures which describe the topology and cosmology of an imaginary
island, whose every feature embodies a philosophical proposition, problem or
solution. Previous exhibitions have presented chapters in this ongoing
endeavour, revealing individual aspects of the Island. For the first time, the
whole project thus far will be brought together including several new works.
This major exhibition at Parasol unit will be accompanied by a large-scale
publication.
Avery's
mapping of the Island, to be completed over a projected ten-year period, can be
interpreted as a meditation on making art and the impossibility of finding
'truth'. The artist is characterised as a bounty-hunter, retrieving artifacts
and documenting scenes from the
subjective
realm. Some of the works on show will focus in absurd detail, on particulars
such as the sale of pickled eggs in the marketplace. Others present mysterious
landscapes, such as the Eternal Forest, a place no one can ever reach but where
a prized beast called the Noumenon is rumoured to live. A specimen of the
Island’s wildlife will also be on show, having been realised in the form of a
large taxidermy sculpture. These vivid and intricate works invite the viewer to
recreate the Island in their own minds, and to use it as an arena for exploring
philosophical conundrums and paradoxes.
Avery's
art is imbued with a formal beauty, humour, and a spirit of philosophical
enquiry. It has roots in the work of such diverse figures as William Blake,
P.G. Wodehouse, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Kosuth and Ludwig
Wittgenstein, but above all contains echoes of Avery’s own life, such as his
upbringing on the Isle of Mull. Once this sprawling project is complete, Avery
plans for it to be encapsulated in several large, leather-bound encyclopaedic
volumes.“
„For the past four years Charles Avery has been documenting his impossibly detailed ‘discoveries’ of a new world. ‘The islanders; an introduction’ initiates the curious into this world, led by the Chinese whisper of fantastical imaginings. Avery, self-appointed explorer, cosmologist and archaeologist, presents his findings through drawings, installation, sculpture and accompanying text.
1/4 size maquette of the eternity chamber’, one of the sculptures within the project, is a physical realisation of his imaginings, which allows the audience to visualise a section of the islander’s world. A hexagonal vessel walled inside by mirrored glass, illuminated by a rainbow spectrum of lights in the ceiling and floor, chequered like that of a Victorian tiled parlour. A door is left slightly ajar; as to let the audience peer into the booth, with a repeated pattern of their face staring back. The shrunken size of the ‘chamber’, could possibly allow the audience to feel more of an affinity to the idea of this chamber, giving one space to imagine it in its full size, being enclosed within it, to have faith in its ‘power’. It is explained by Avery that an outside tribe of the islanders believe in the ‘teachings’ of a gull, believed to be an incarnation of an unworldly being, named ‘meduso’. Images of gulls adorn the outside walls of the prism, and nearby a large drawing presents ‘the palace of the gulls’, where the eternity chamber is housed, atop a cliff facing the sea.
The symmetry, pattern and embellishment of the two structures, resembles that of middle eastern architecture, specifically a mosque or temple, coupled with the thought of inhabitants flocking to become “like the man” presumably that of the demi-god of ‘meduso’ mentioned in the accompanying text. Though rather than drawing devoted believers, Avery characterizes his worshippers as outsiders, striving for the eternal life promised by the few seconds spent within the chamber. ‘A trio smoking minutes before entering the eternity chamber’ (pencil and gauche) depicts, with Avery’s familiar precise draftmanship, the hallowed interior as a dark, dirty and foreboding place, with queues for the shining and auspicious eternity booth. The outsider’s look as though they are dispossessed people taking turns in the eternity chamber to keep warm; there is no sense of occasion or excitement, and gives a distinct impression that the artist is using his world of fantasy as a satirical mirror to our own society.
The project itself does not prompt me to wander upon the shores of this world and its islanders, as I have more than enough information presented to describe it and these leads to no space for speculation. Though it does lead me to wonder upon the avid documenter himself, and how he wants his work to be perceived. He presents himself as a character, the fictional explorer, and I find it curious; the schizophrenic nature of artist and explorer, onlooker and controller, the obsessive character himself, and whether he wants to satirise our on world through his. The engineered quality of Avery’s collection deems the project constricting in its academic nature, and with the weighty force of Avery’s masked intentions looming large in the background, it becomes a shadow over the beautifully engaging constructions of his imagination.
It is said that Avery is one of a new generation of artists practising under the brand “Altermodern”, meaning “Art made now in response to a global society and as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism.”
Outsider artist Chris Hipkiss addresses such issues, a passionate environmentalist and prolific visionary, his large-scale pencil drawings also bearing resemblance to Avery’s graphic and meticulous depictions.
Hipkiss’s work mirrors our own planets influence of industry upon nature, though through his beautiful and strange post apocalyptic visions of agricultural landscape, peppered with alien army’s of workers and overshadowed by curious mechanical structures. The ground in which Hipkiss has been placed; outsider art, is due to the fact he has no formal art training; no education after 16, and the illustrational and almost naive quality of his drawings. In conjunction with this and the repeated subjects of his work inform and arouse the curiosity of the audience into his psychological tensions, seemingly spilling onto the paper. Avery’s islanders are, while being intriguing and engaging creations, held to ransom by the constricting justifications of the artist.
With a project of such scale, the audience could participate in unearthing the relationships between the assorted pieces, how they interact and overlap, though with ‘the islanders..’ it seems the reading of the text may decelerate the coherence of the collection, dividing rather than bringing together his vision. Philosophical propositions and extensive explanations accompanying each piece could lead the audience to prioritise their time in absorbing the information presented, with the physical works becoming pushed to a secondary level of concentration. This is unfortunate for his sculptures, as they struggle to achieve the magical sentiment has scope to. It is obvious from Avery’s prolific nature that he plans to publish ‘The islanders’ inside an encyclopaedia upon conclusion, and one may wonder that the ‘research element’ may gain more attraction within this format. Avery’s inventive capacity is no doubt remarkable and his variety of work entirely alluring, while his intellectual rigor may overwhelm the project and its capacity to engage, and pivots upon the audience’s willingness to comprehend.“ - Lotti V. Closs
„There are few artists brave enough to play God, but Charles Avery has no problems on that score. Over the last 10 years he has been building an island and painstakingly documenting its inhabitants, landscape and cosmology in text, paint and sculpture. The premise could be straight out of Tolkien, except that Avery is much more sophisticated than that. His world is populated with mythical beasts that haunt the inhabitants' psyche, decrying their very nature and usurping their sense of reason.
Many of the natives are addicted to the local delicacy, pickled eggs, which enslaves them to the island. Hunters in tweed jackets and shotguns search out a Kantian dichotomy while hawkers in the local flea market sell pictures of nude women for the price of peace of mind.
All this would be academic if it wasn't for Avery's skilled draftsmanship. His pictures are so compelling it is impossible not to become embroiled in the life of this secret community.
Born in Oban in 1973, Avery grew up on the Isle of Mull, and there is no question that his childhood haunts this epic narrative. His new show is an anthropological survey of island life. Like a 19th-century explorer returning from a fact-finding mission, he offers the intrepid viewer a sampling of the many curious species and social customs he has experienced.
Why we like him: For a dodgy dealer called Mr Impossible, a platypus looking chancer who got himself elevated to demi-god status.
Any similarities?: He managed to get kicked out of Central St Martins after six months – a feat thought to be impossible.
Move over YBA: He is part of a new generation of artists practicing under the banner of Altermodern.
Alter what?: A term coined by
the French theorist Nicolas Bourriaud, meaning art made now in response to a
global society and as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism.“ – Jessica
Lack
‘Be not afraid,’ says Caliban in The Tempest,
‘the isle is full of noises that bring delight and hurt not.’ Charles Avery
might disagree. For the Mull-born-and-bred artist, it was the sounds of the
woods around Lochdon that got his childhood imagination working overtime. ‘I
had to walk past a forest every day on my way home, and the noises that came
out of there were terrifying. To me it sounded like a lion killing a gazelle.’In his epic charting of the life and times of an imaginary island Avery has approached his subject like an explorer, recording the topography, history and culture of the place. But his role, like that of the artist, is ambiguous. While in awe of his subject, he also shares something in common with the island colonisers who hunt down wild, mythical beasts, kill them and pose for the camera with their quarry.
While this show, part of an endeavour begun in 2004, brings together the on-going project for the first time and includes new works, Avery insists he has no deadline: ‘Finishability is a moot point here,’ he says. Aside from the scale of the project, Avery’s ability to turn his hand to several disciplines, including drawing, sculpture and taxidermy, is impressive.
In the prologue to the show an unnamed narrator writes, ‘I had sought this strange land with a view to beings its discoverer.’ So begins a journey that is a feast for the eyes and a serious workout for the imagination. The island and its inhabitants come to life as we progress around the exhibits, from collected souvenirs and keepsakes via elaborate maps brimming with references to philosophical conundrums, to accomplished drawings and sculptures. Avery’s cast of characters is extensive, among them a group of steely-eyed fishermen, some fantastical beasts such as the Noumenon, a pantheon of gods (two headless fighting dogs joined at the neck; a tiny lovable duck-billed creature in a white tux and top hat called Mr Impossible). Gradually, a narrative takes shape and the cast of characters becomes so vivid it feels like we are watching scenes from a movie. ‘Film is my most important cultural medium,’ agrees Avery. ‘The characters in The Island are similar to a Coen Brothers film in the way [the Coens] favour the same actors from film to film.’
A love of nonsense, fantasy and
humour are at work here, but that doesn’t stop Avery posing some big questions
about the nature of truth and reality, the essence of creativity and the role
of art in society. But it’s the dazzling draughtsmanship that shows his
pedigree as an artist and keeps us engaged: ‘Drawing was the only thing I was
any good at when I was a child,’ he says. ‘I learned from trial and error, from
drawing from my head.’ While a few of the characters in the exhibition are
drawn from life, the majority are imagined. In the wall-sized drawing of a
bustling market place, ‘The Place of the Rout of the If’en’, certain characters
and objects are meticulously worked into a kind of hyper-reality, while other
areas are left sketchy and unresolved. But appearances on the island are
deceptive: the harder you look, the more you discover. Just like the eerie
forest that inspired Avery’s childhood, it’s what we don’t know that fuels our
imagination.“ - Lila Rawlings
„Visitors to the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis would have had plenty to keep them occupied: eating a newly invented ice-cream cone, or walking among the ‘parade of human progress’ of the human zoo. Here you could find replica villages of the indigenous people of Congo or New Guinea, or the tribes of the new American territory of the Philippines, including the dog-eating Igorots, who created countless rumours of missing pets across the city. You would not have been surprised, then, to find a stall nearby detailing with text, sketches and sculptural curiosities the views and inhabitants of a distant land known simply as ‘The Island’. Witness a taxidermied Ridable, a beast with the stature of a llama, the face of a dog and chicken’s feet. Marvel in disgust at a jar of the highly addictive local snack of Henderson’s boiled eggs pickled in gin. Or hear of the Islander’s most popular tourist attraction, the Plane of the Gods, where living Island deities can be visited.
Standing alongside, sporting a safari hat, awkwardly holding a rifle in one hand and a leather-bound travel guide in the other, you might find The Island’s creator, Charles Avery. At Parasol Unit, he presents ‘The Islanders: An Introduction’, an anthropological museum of his findings, bringing together several smaller exhibitions since 2004, when he began work on his imaginary territory. A mixture of Cairo, New York and Avery’s own childhood home on the Scottish isle of Mull, the Island is peopled by faint, tetchy-looking women and gruff, wizened men who occupy a world where there is no distinction between imaginary and physical reality. Taking a range of philosophical theories as guidelines, Avery has created a sort of metaphysical ant farm. On the map of the mirrored archipelago that forms his world, clever puns abound: the Analitic Ocean, Cape Conchious-Ness, the Causeway of Effect. The noumenon – Immanuel Kant’s concept, which describes an unknowable thing that cannot be observed with the senses but only conceived of or believed in – is here a debated beast whose existence is unconfirmed but for which the Island’s hunters relentlessly search.
Wall texts describe this society’s paradigms, cults, creatures and places. Large drawings and physical artefacts accompany each text, fleshing out The Island as a vibrant place of constantly shifting existence, but the incessant dialectic of which inevitably seems to arrive at an existential stalemate. The drawings are unfinished, erratic in the precise minutiae they focus in on, as if excerpts from Avery’s ethnographic notebook. The black and white drawing Untitled (Place of the Route of the If’en) (2007) depicts a busy market scene, with peddlers of watches, second-hand junk and geometric sculptures selling their wares to an indifferent crowd. Like William Hogarth or George Cruikshank’s bustling street scenes, there is a distinct sense of alienation, highlighted further by his characters’ detailed, emotive faces, whose grim caricature recalls more contemporary illustrators such as Daniel Clowes. The installation Untitled (Diagram of the Plane of the Gods) (2006) produces in miniature the the Islanders’ bizarre pantheon, including two headless dogs joined at the neck in endless tug-of-war and a small creature called Mr Impossible, who resembles an aristocratic, duck-billed version of Guns ’n’ Roses guitarist Slash.
The gods, however, like everything else on The Island, are a profane embodiment of abstract concepts. Take, for example, Mr Impossible, who was deemed a god by a trio of drunken philosophers, arguing that owing to his ridiculous physique he was ‘highly improbable’ and ‘therefore he is essential’. The role of philosophy as status-giver in Avery’s project is telling. The drawing Untitled (Avatars) (2006) shows the interior of a shop full of The Island’s small creatures, both mythical and mundane, apparently being sold as personal avatars. The endowing act of creating an avatar pervades his world, each aspect of The Island an emblematic transcription or one-to-one analogy of some philosophical tenet. This endowment extends to our guide’s own choice of presentation, using the museum set-up to provide us with a static portrait of this foreign place. The philosophy of this exhibition is meant to be an exhaustive epistemology, a summary of characteristics presented to us with an air of finality and predetermined readings. Despite humorous moments in Avery’s writing and the seething life of his drawings, it at times feels like a cross between the obsessive detail of the Klingon Dictionary (1985) and the fictionalized ‘Philosophy 101’ of Sophie’s World (1991). As a result, The Island does not feel like a living place we can imaginatively inhabit. Like the badger-esque King in Exile (2008), this is a stuffed and preserved presentation. Rather than taking part in his explorative creation, we are forced to rely on the artist’s numerous explanatory texts, which relegate the visual elements of the show to pure illustration. Chris Fite-Wassilak
"With great pleasure we announce the first gallery exhibition in the
Netherlands by Charles Avery (Oban, 1973) after his solo museum presentation at
the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in 2009. The exhibition will cover both
gallery spaces and will feature new sculptures, drawings and film works.
Since 2004 Avery has been describing, in the form of drawings,
texts, and objects, a fictional Island. The Island is located at the centre of
an archipelago of innumerable constituents. The gateway to the Island is the
town of Onomatopoeia, once the stepping off point of the pioneers who first
came to the place, turned colonial outpost, turned boom town, bustling
metropolis, depression ravaged slum, and regenerated city of culture and
tourist destination.
For the exhibition at Grimm Gallery, Avery presents a great number
of new works that explore as yet entirely undepicted features of the Island.
There is The Jadindagadendar, the name of the
municipal park of Onomatopoeia. On show will be several specimens of the flora,
including a ‘weeping’ tree, over four meters in height, and a meticulous
architectural study of the tree, demonstrating the pure mathematical system
which gives rise to its form.
There is The Qoro-qoros, the given name of the
near endless, miasmic network of windless mounds and pools which separates the
Island from its Colonial master, the state known as Triangland. A huge
four meter drawing, depicts three individuals, attempting to navigate the
monotonous wilderness, home to bloated giant eels who have become disorientated
in the labyrinth of stagnant waters and who live by feeding off the other
luckless beings (including humanity) who have come to pass here. It seems that
these people in this drawing — unlike the subsistence fishermen who , unable to
afford a boat, come to harvest the great eels from their pools with a view to
trading their insipid flesh — are visiting simply out of curiosity, and for the
thrill of jumping from qoro to spongy qoro. ( A dangerous game to play because
although one may push off from the rocky land that borders this territory with
a jaunty spring in ones step, and that one may continue with a feeling of near
weightless indomitability and travel some distance from the Terra Firma,
all of a sudden one will be overcome with fatigue, and the spongy mounds that
had propelled you forth start to suck you in. That phenomenon is what is called
The Lull.)
And there is the relatively comforting bustle of Onomatopoeia.
Another large scale drawing depicts a party of young women and men, gathered on
the quayside with cart loads of provisions, ready to set out on a expedition in
search of the Noumenon, a creature which is believed by some to exist,
uniquely, somewhere in the dark wilderness of the Island, and has been held to
have done so, without capture, for as long as people have sought it. The party
is full of enthusiasm, checking their equipment, studying maps, ingesting
recreational drugs and sky-larking.
In the background, on the gable-end wall of the Penrose Trading Co.
there are several poster-advertisements — some of which are rendered full size
and full colour in the gallery space — promoting businesses and cultural
activity of Onomatopoeia. Central to the Island’s cultural identity is the
phenomenon known as The Eternal Dialectic, an endless
philosophical discussion which is acted out in the form of debates, happenings,
and theatrical revues and which covers a gamut of philosophical activity from
the Logical Positivists to the Metas, a band
of thugs who issued, via a poster campaign, the declaration that they renounced
the Dialectic in favour of violence (which they hold to be the purest from of
expression), and who roam the streets in search of rival factions to assault.
There is no overarching theme to this exhibition beyond the
structure of the Island itself, although ideas of eternal return and pure
mathematics are especially apparent. The work here represents the output from
several new explorations into various aspects of the Island, the product of six
months of intense and happy activity in the studio."
„STEP into the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in the next couple of
months and you might just discover yourself in a different country. Or, at the
very least, in an undiscovered part of our own land, an island off the coast of
Charles Avery's imagination.
The 35-year-old artist has spent four years making work about the place he
simply calls the Island. He has mapped its topography, drawn its inhabitants,
created models of its creatures. It has become the focus of his practice, what
he describes as "the defining project of my life".
Avery was one of the six artists chosen to represent Scotland at last year's
Venice Biennale, the only one who did not go the Glasgow School of Art (he is
largely self-taught), and the only one whose work is not predominantly
conceptual. He is known particularly for his drawing, which one critic
described his work as "probably the finest contemporary figurative
drawings I've seen in the last 15 years".
His show at the SNGMA, created at the London gallery Parasol Unit, is five
times bigger than any other solo show to date. It is an indication of how much
work he has produced in the last four years. Last spring, when I visited his
studio and saw him working on a large, detailed drawing, I assumed it was one
of a handful on that scale. Now I realise it is one of many.
Avery draws fast and fluidly. He likes the medium because "it allows me
to work at the speed I think". But he insists that he was not working at
full capacity. "So much of the project up to this point has been about
working out how to do a project like this – like a dog trying to get its teeth
around a football. It hasn't been sheer production by any means.
"I'm surprised how well this show has come together. It was extremely
well planned but I'm very pleased – it's not often that anything I plan comes
together that well! This exhibition serves as a kind of beach-head, a position
gained. It's time for an extended period of reflection."
The scale of the current show, taking up the space that housed the Tracey
Emin retrospective during the summer, is an indication of the regard in which
Avery is now held. Philip Long, senior curator at the SNGMA, first noticed his
work at a show at doggerfisher in Edinburgh in 2002. "When we were
selecting the artists for Scotland in Venice 2007, he was an artist we wanted
to choose.
"I think he's an extraordinary talent. His ability as a draughtsman and
his ability to produce images of the world which he has invented is quite
extraordinary and really quite dramatic. Like a lot of great artists, his work
makes an immediate impression, potentially to a wide audience, but it also
offers the possibility of more and more intellectual stimulus, the more you go
into it."
Avery describes being shown in Venice as "a great experience from start
to finish". "Everybody in the art world was there. It was a great way
of introducing part of the project to people. I hope the Scottish Arts Council
sees the value of it and does it again, it's extremely good value for money in
terms of what it does for the international profile of the artists who participate,
and the knock-on effect in terms of how Scotland is perceived. It seems there
is something eternally exciting about Scotland and Scottishness."
And the Island is definitely a Scottish island. Avery spent his formative
years on Mull and once described it as "the total basis of my
subconscious". "A lot of writers say: 'Write what you know', so I've
based it (the Island) on my direct experience, which is growing up on the West
Coast of Scotland, some time in Edinburgh, some time in Rome and a lot of time in
Hackney. You'll find a distillation of these in the works."
While he freely acknowledges that the Island is "a fiction" and
"an intellectual pursuit", a place for exploring philosophical ideas,
he has a disconcerting habit of talking about it as if it was just a few miles
down the road, and the characters were known to him personally. He tells me,
almost apologetically, that the main town – Onomatopoeia – "is a bit of a
building site at the moment".
We are talking in the room given over to the marketplace "which sits on
the Avenue of the Gods, which leads to the Plane of the Gods, which is next
door". He jerks a thumb towards the next room of the gallery. There, the
model figures of the gods are in an undigified cluster on the floor awaiting placement
on the Plane: Wi, the giant swimmer, clutching his rolled up towel, the tiny
top-hatted, duck-beaked figure of Mr Impossible.
As we talk, we are eyed by a taxidermy model of a creature that has the
snout of a pig, the body of a badger and the tail of an armadillo, and is
trying to reach inside a jar to capture a pickled egg. (Pickled eggs are
important on the Island, there are several jars displayed on a nearby plinth).
In the further room is a "ridable", a larger animal somewhere
between a wolfhound and a llama. The human characters are "drawn from my
imagination, with the odd exception of a cameo role for a friend, or an
intellectual superstar". His wife gets to put in an appearance, as does
Bertrand Russell.
Perhaps not surprisingly, comparisons have been made with Mervyn Peake, the
creator of the Gormenghast stories, and with Tolkien, which Avery says
"sends a shiver down his spine". He's more comfortable with allusions
to Borges, Blake and Jonathan Swift. The Island more an eccentric offshoot of
Mull than Middle Earth.
"I don't want to it to look like sci-fi, or 'Hey, this is weird and
wonderful!' I sometimes think, have the people who say these things actually
looked? What is so weird about this place? There are a few weird animals, but
nothing weirder than would turn up in Australia, they're just different,
they're completely plausible. The Gods are a strange-looking bunch, but if you
look at all the gods human beings have evoked I don't think they're
particularly weirder."
Nor, he says, is it meant to be a satirical comment on the "real
world", which was part of the intention behind invented worlds of writers
such as Swift and Thomas More. "People have perceived some kind of
satirical content to this, and there really isn't. I think maybe people have
mistaken my ultra earnestness for cynicism. I don't see it that way."
The work he calls the "showstopper" is a couple of rooms away, the
Eternity Chamber, a structure a little bigger than a telephone box where a
combination of mirrors and geometric patterns make the inside look infinite.
The installation team are referring to it as "the Tardis".
"You can't go in there, for health and safety reasons," says
Avery. "That's not the gallery rules, that's the conceit. It would drive
you mad. I've been in there a couple of times and you do think 'Hang on,
where's the door?'" He says that confining his work to a single imagined
world is anything but restrictive.
"Some people talk as if it's a prison I've created, but it's the
opposite. It gives to freedom to explore the ideas I want to explore. I might
have a drawing which is more about mathematical philosophy, and one which is
more about people. If you create a space where you put the things you don't
have to relate them intellectually, you relate them spatially. It's about
turning that intellectual space into a physical space.
"The Island is not a parallel world, it's part of this world, therefore
it is a fiction. I use the word 'fiction' very broadly. History is a fiction,
art history is fiction. Maybe reality is the biggest fiction of all!"
„Scottish artist Charles Avery (born 1973) has devoted himself exclusively
to the creation of a fictional island archipelago since 2004. In detailed,
large-scale drawings, installations, sculptures and objects, Avery forms a
bizarre imaginary reality out of diverse philosophical ideas and concepts:
Fabulous creatures, deities, tourists and adventurers are embedded in a complex
social structure, merging into an entire cosmos that ranges between pure
fantasy and theoretical reflection.
Around 40 works are assembled in this solo presentation that not only
represents his debut in Germany, but also his most comprehensive exhibition to
date. As if in a reportage, it invites viewers to immerse themselves in the
bustling activities of Onomatopoeia (the term for a word sounding like the
sound it describes), the capital of this world, where objectivity is believed
to indicate imbecility.
Avery constructs his island world on a visual and a literary level: The ink,
pencil and charcoal drawings executed with convincing precision and imaginative
detail illustrate scenes from the islanders’ everyday life while objects
suggested as “souvenirs” — stuffed creatures such as a one-armed snake or
curiosities like a collection of philosopher’s hats — underscore the believability
of the place and make the island tangible. The pieces are accompanied by texts
from the books The Islanders: An Introduction (2008) and the catalog
published on the occasion of this exhibition Onomatopoeia: The Port
(2010) in which Avery introduces the island’s characters and special features
in a robinsonade style.
The core of the exhibition is the drawing of the Port of Onomatopoeia
(2009/10) measuring 2.5 by 5 meters: The “Utility,” one of the numerous ships
that bring tourists and adventurers to the island, has just landed. The jetty
is populated by native if’en, stone-mice and eel sellers, tourists wearing the
popular “I counted the gods and they are infinite” t-shirts and the
ever-present dog-like silverbobs. There, the two ports of entry, “Duty” and
“Identity,” provide an initial indication of the city’s main attraction: the
eternal dialectic.
The eternal dialectic is a collective debate that takes place day and night
on the streets and in the many cafés and bars of Onomatopoeia, the interiors of
which have been captured in numerous drawings (Magregors Bar, 2008 / The
Bar of the One Armed Snake, 2010). The dispute is sparked off by
fundamental philosophical questions — If both sides of the world are identical,
is it really two different sides? Is the world an entity or can it be divided
into parts? — and not least the question regarding the existence of the
noumenon.
While the concept “noumenon,” meaning “what is conceived” as the antonym of
“phenomenon: what is perceived,” was used for example by Kant as a synonym for
the expression “the thing-in-itself,” in Charles Avery’s work it appears as a
legendary creature which is said to live in the mountains “phenomenon of the
noumenon” but has never been seen, let alone captured, despite the efforts of
hunters and adventurers on countless expeditions.
The main debaters of the eternal dialectic are, on the one hand, the
positivists who support the hunters of the noumenon and are convinced of its
existence, and the rationalists on the other, who make fun of the hunters and
positivists. There are numerous other convictions between these poles ranging
from the solipsists (Solipsist, 2010) who only believe in their own
existence and the balance obsessed dualists (Dualist, 2010) who
constantly seek parallels and equivalents, to the radical metas who, beyond all
dialectics, have come to regard violence as the purest form of expression and
whose rebellious posters appear on house facades in numerous drawings.
The most eloquent speakers in the individual groups are the “dooks” who are
easily recognizable by their hats, seventeen different examples of which are
gathered together in the exhibition. The form of the hats is oriented on the
wearer’s philosophical direction: The esoteric Diskworlders who comprehend the
world as area and whose approach is most closely related to the creationists in
our reality, wear a flat round headdress while the hat worn by the solipsists
has a prickly construction that aggressively protrudes into its surroundings.
The metas, by contrast, do without any form of symbolism and appropriate the
city for themselves by making their hat out of Onomatopoeia’s emblem.
Not only the inhabitants of the island follow theoretical principles, the
fauna does as well: In Charles Avery’s most recent piece, he captures the
“Dihedra” (from “dihedral angle,” i.e. the angle between two theoretical
plains). Popular as pets and souvenirs, they are attracted by geometrical
structures, fluttering around them like schematic butterflies (Dihedra,
2010, installation, 8mm projector and steel construction). Their wings are so
delicate that they only have one side and they appear to be the same size from
any distance across the world.
Although the islanders regard a precise geographical location of their world
as useless, its improbable geography and philosophical range can be
comprehended in detail on a meticulously drawn, unfolded World Map
(2008).
It is an island archipelago on both — exactly equivalent — sides of the
globe, that spans between the two epistemological poles: The truth about the
truth is to be found at the South Pole, referencing the basic problem of the
correspondence theory that questions the verifiability of “truth,” while there
is an endless forest at the North Pole beyond Descartes’ axiom, whereof one
cannot speak and, in keeping with Wittgenstein’s seventh proposition, must
therefore be silent.
Between them, there are places with charged associative names such as the
island called The Causality of Effect or the Bay of Senility. Via the Sea of
Clarity, sea voyagers reach The Memory of Familiarity, an inland water on the
shore of which Onomatopoeia is located.
Despite the meticulousness with which Charles Avery formulates his cosmos,
he does without a plot that would recapitulate the world in any epic narrative:
The island world is a theoretical playground that invites the viewers to think
one step further and equip with their own stories — or to look on from the edge
and wonder if there really is an island at all.“ - arttattler
„Pilar
Corrias Gallery is delighted to present ‘Place de la Revolution’: the latest
installment in Charles Avery’s epic project, The Islanders.
Since 2005,
Charles Avery has devoted his practice to the perpetual description of a
fictional world. Replete with its own population and geography, Avery’s
intricately conceived territory exists today through drawings, objects,
installations and texts. Exhibited episodically, these heterogeneous elements
serve as terms within the unifying structure of the Island – as multiple
emissions of Avery’s imaginary world, and as a meditation on the central themes
of philosophy and the problems of art-making.
The centre
piece of this exhibition is a sixteen foot drawing depicting the eponymous
Place de la Revolution, a large circus where hundreds of cyclists converge,
before spinning off on their personal trajectories. Accompanying – and relating
to – the Place de la Revolution are several other drawings, sculptures and one
moving image.
Avery’s
vivid works articulate a space of potential discovery and intrigue, which bids
the viewer to recreate the Island in their own minds.“
Trish Scott: What does Charles Avery’s project The Islanders reveal about the boundaries between ´fact´ and ´fiction´? (pdf)
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