CHARLES AVERY

Lives and works in London and on the Island of Mull (UK)

Over the course of his career, Charles Avery has dedicated himself to a singular world-building project through the depiction of an imaginary island. Titled The Islanders, this project describes the formation of Avery’s extensive fiction through drawings, writing, objects, architecture, and design.

The Island at the center of Avery’s constructed world is located on an archipelago. 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 a 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 artworks are rendered in physical form in his sculptures and installations. 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.”

Recently Avery had a solo exhibition The Eidola, Pigs and Blades on the Inner Vast at GRIMM, New York, NY (US) and created a permanent site-specific sculpture installation Henge#2 in Domburg, Zeeland (NL).

Selected exhibitions: A Room Hung With Thoughts, Green Family Foundation, Dallas TX, (US), 2025; Size Matters | Monumental Drawing Now, Museum MORE, Gorssel (NL); My World, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, Singer Museum, Laren (NL) 2024; The Nothing of the Day, GRIMM, London (UK), 2023; Planet B. Climate Change and the New Sublime, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Palazzo Bollani, Venice (IT), 2022; We, on the Rising Wave, Busan Biennial 2022, Busan (SK); The Hunter’s return, Paradys, Arcadia, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, Triennial of Friesland, Oranjewoud (NL), 2022; Le Voci della Sera, Vistamarestudio, Milan (IT), 2022 and Art is the Antidote, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL), 2022.

Selected collections: AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Arts Council England Collection, London (UK); The David and Indre Roberts Collection, London (UK); Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main (DE); FRAC Île de France, Paris (FR); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (FR) and San Francisco, CA (US); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh (UK); and Tate Modern, London (UK), among others.

Courtesy GRIMM