Spin Events
The Islanders: An Introduction by Charles Avery
Untitled (Self Escaping from island), 2008 (c) Courtesy of the artist and doggerfisher, edinburgh
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
29 January 2009, 6-7.30pm
To start the year, we will be visiting the Gallery of Modern Art to discuss The Islanders: An Introduction by Charles Avery, a key figure in a new generation of Scottish artists.
For the past four years, Charles 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. Avery’s mapping of the island focuses on absurd details from mysterious landscapes, such as the Eternal Forest to strange gods and the inhabitant’s addiction to gin-pickled eggs. The island’s wildlife is also on show represented in the form of large taxidermy sculpture.
‘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!’ – Charles Avery.