Emi Avora
Emi Avora is a Greek born, UK trained (Oxford University and Royal Academy Schools) and Singapore based artist. . Solo projects include the National Theatre of Greece Athens, South Square Arts Centre, UK, The Apartment Gallery, Athens, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York and Gallery Truebenbach, Cologne. She has participated in a number of group shows including Studio Voltaire, London, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, The Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. Her work can be found in private as well as public collections in Europe and the USA, including The Wonderful Fund collection and Marsh collection. She has also been an Elizabeth Greenshields recipient and her work has been in various publications including ArtMaze Magazine, the New York Times, Future Now, Aesthetica Magazine and Defining the Contemporary, The Whitechapel in Association with Sotheby’s, Friend of the Artist (FOA) and Create! magazine. She was one of the 2020 Delphian gallery open call group exhibition winners. Her recent projects include a solo show at Nouri, Singapore curated by Yun Teng Sheet, a group show at Alliance Francaise, Singapore organized by Intersections gallery and a group show organized by Cream in Athens.
Could you tell us more about your background and how you began creating art?
I originally come from Corfu, Greece, an island on the Ionian sea. The Mediterranean light and the images from the island are always part of me despite having moved away early on to attend art school. I was lucky to have a father who is also a painter and so seeing and making art had always been part of my life. I would spend a lot of time in my father’s home studio as a kid and I experimented with all the art materials he had. I started making art more consciously when I was a teenager and that is when I decided I wanted to go to art school. I lived in London for many years before moving to Asia four years ago. My work conveys an amalgamation of experiences in the different places I have lived.
What does your art aim to say to its viewers?
Through my work I aim to offer the viewer a space for dreaming in as well as a visual journey with entry points and exit points throughout. So I am in a way more interested in what the viewers feel rather than how they interpret the work. Although my starting points often come from my own life and observations, I leave the compositions open to interpretation. I also aim to draw attention to the process of the making, the painting elements themselves. The meeting point of the process and the subject matter is where the work comes alive.
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your daily routine when working?
I work in quite an organic way so I don't have a very specific routine for making the work. I tend to gather observations and impressions either through everyday photographs, sketches or sometimes found imagery. However these might translate on to canvas in a very loose way.
I follow a process of staining my canvases in an abstract manner, sometimes using left over paint and very watered down washes. So my support most of the time has a patina to it already before I start the process of ‘drawing’ with paint. Following that comes a type of conversation between me and the work where I use colour and light to create the feeling and atmosphere of the overall work. Its a balancing act as I am in a way a maximalist but I also want to create a singular artwork that can be observed in one glance.
What is the essential element in your art?
In terms of subject matter, at the moment I am very interested in the ‘conversations’ that are created in my compositions between seemingly disparate elements but also in the imaginary ‘space’ those create for the viewer. Colour and Light are my essential tools for creating the work so I am very focused on those.
In your opinion, what role does the artist have in society?
I believe contemporary artists act a bit like a sieve or a filter, gathering observations, knowledge, feelings and experiences to then create singular interpretations of our world and our existence. These interpretations can take a lot of different forms. I tend to use my interpretations as pointers of hope or healing- despite the chaos that often surround us, internally and externally, art can let some light in to make us understand ourselves and the world around us.
