Emi Avora
All Alone TogetherApril 16 - 22, 2020
Currently based in Singapore, Emi Avora is drawing subject matter from her everyday, her sketches and images of public and personal spaces with a focus on the interior and still life. The body of work gathered for this online exhibition mainly depicts still life scenes around a table. Although mostly unpopulated, food and drink leftovers are exaggerated, sometimes magnified in a humorous manner that might have some uneasy undercurrent. These paintings have been made since Avora moved to Asia and elements of her everyday life there enter her pictures in a surprising way. Tropical foliage acts as a vignette around the scenes and becomes very much part of her patterned compositions. In between the foliage, objects like Greek vases and ceramic plates pop up and act as symbols of myth.
Apart from entering a dialogue with painting’s modernist historical canons, the paintings also ponder on our ambiguous relationship to colonial narratives, exoticism and taste. Humour, curiosity and anxiety are elements that occupy the compositions. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes intense and with the use of light in the driving seat, Avora’s work allows space for invention, creating a conversation between looking and making, between the real and the imaginary
Images © 2020 Emi Avora
Image List:
-Emi Avora, Dragon Fruit, 100x120cm, acrylic on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, All alone together, 160x140cm, acrylic on canvas, 2020
-Emi Avora, Crab Dinner, 120x140cm, acrylic on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, Warrior with Vase, 90x70cm, acrylic on canvas, 2020
-Emi Avora, Monkey Business, 100x120cm, acrylic on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, Luncheon, 120x100cm, acrylic on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, Dancing in the Dark, 70x90cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, Afternoon, 140x120cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, I’d like to be a potter, 70x90cm, acrylic on canvas, 2019
-Emi Avora, Blue Vase, 42x29cm, acrylic on canvas, 2019
*Read Emi Avora’s interview here
*For more info on Emi’s work please visit her website & Instagram