Emi Avora
Emi Avora is a Greek-born, UK-trained (Oxford University and Royal Academy Schools), and Singapore-based artist. She has exhibited worldwide, notably in projects at the National Theatre of Greece, Athens; Studio Voltaire, London; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; The Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; Theocharakis Foundation, Athens; and National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore.
Her work can be found in private as well as public collections in Europe, Asia, and the USA, including The Wonderful Fund collection, Marsh collection, and the Central Bank of Greece collection. She has also been an Elizabeth Greenshields recipient, and her work has been featured in various publications, including ArtMaze Magazine, Create Magazine, Artist Friend, The New York Times, and Defining the Contemporary (The Whitechapel in association with Sotheby’s).
Her recent exhibitions include solo presentations by Olive and Jean Gallery, Singapore, and Art Seasons Gallery, Singapore, as well as participation in group shows at JW Projects, Singapore; 27Concept Gallery, Brussels; Intersections Gallery, Singapore; Cohle Gallery, Paris; a66 Gallery, Mallorca; Yudian Gallery, Hangzhou; and the Beep Painting Biennial, Wales. She is the recent winner of the Overseas Women in Art Prize, London.
Artist Statement
Born in Greece and currently based between Greece and Singapore, Emi Avora is drawing subject matter from her life in Asia as well as her Greek ancestry, with a focus on a combination of interior spaces, still life, and landscape. By entering a dialog with earlier historical canons, her paintings ponder on how to reconcile our everyday existence with larger cosmic forces that govern our environment, our relationships, our past, and our future.
The search for her own rediscovered ‘place’ and ‘identity,’ as well as curiosity for the shapes that surround her, are elements that occupy her compositions. Often, her paintings present encounters or ‘conversations’ between seemingly disparate objects or symbols. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes intense, and with the use of light in the driving seat, her work employs a range of heightened palettes to allow the viewer space for re-invention, creating a gap between looking and making, between the real and the imaginary. By the act of re-imagining, Avora enters into an escapist realm, albeit parallel to the real.
Everyday observations blend into complex formations and become exaggerated through the use of color and change of scale, focusing on what surprises her or grasps her attention. Reality is juxtaposed with mythology, and observed situations are woven into fictional compositions that allow a multitude of readings. Equally, the very process of her mark-making opens up a platform to investigate painting’s power to transcend imagery by breaking it down to the basics of color, shape, pattern, and composition.
www.emiavora.com
