Onomatopoeia – Its People and Surroundings

In 2005, Scottish Artist Charles Avery embarked on a long-term project entitled The Islanders, a detailed description of the topography, cosmology and inhabitants of a fictional island, realised in drawings, objects and texts.

This book is a portrait of the people and culture of Onomatopoeia, capital city, port and gateway to the Island. The town was once the stepping off point for pioneers and travellers. It grew from an outpost to a bustling boomtown, before entering a phase of decline into depression ravaged slum, and now – in the fictional present – finds itself reborn as a regenerated city of culture with its own Museum of Modern Art.

About Charles Avery
Charles Avery lives and works in London. His practice is dedicated to the description of a fictional Island which he continues to elaborate, with its own population, customs and cosmology, nature and architecture, expressed in the form of large-scale drawings, sculptures, installations, texts and moving images. This ongoing body of work created within a specific framework is rooted in Avery’s own life and upbringing on the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland.

Extract (p.231)
"Much of Onomatopoeia could seem just another grey day on a remote Scottish island if it weren't for the telltale flysaucer headgear and spectacular feats of millinery adorning Islanders' heads, declaring their philosophical affinities (bright pink and shaped like flower buds for the Empiricists; a gridded white model for the Rationalists). Giant rubber spheres; tessellated prismatic small-scale architectures; a four-sided box with a maze motif on each side; an elongated, skyscraper-ish black thing, reminiscent of a miniature tubular city or mixed-length organ pipes. I could go on and on."

Features

• The third book about Charles Avery’s ongoing body of work entitled The Islanders.
• Since 2005, the artist has devoted his practice to the description of a fictional island which he continues to elaborate on; an island with its own population, customs and cosmology.
• Onomatopoeia showcases new drawings, sculptures and other objects that are part of this long-term project about an imaginary world.
• The book is concluded with two essays by art critics Robin Mackay and Gilda Williams, and an index of all the works featured in this publication.
• Artworks from The Islanders can also be seen in galleries and museums such as Grimm Gallery (Amsterdam), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam) and Pillar Corrias Gallery (London).

Publication Details

• Release: 5 January 2016
• Frame Publishers
• English
• Written by Charles Avery, Robin Mackay and Gilda Williams
• Graphic design by Sebastiaan Brandsen and Paul Cleary
• 235 x 315 mm
• 256 pages / full colour / hardcover
• ISBN 978-94-91727-96-2
• €34.00 (excluding shipping costs)