Fair Art Fair x The Auction Collective

Food and coming together around the table has become quite an important part of my work since I moved to Asia four years ago.  There is a huge emphasis on food and a huge variety of food that sometimes is overwhelming.  ‘Feasting with shadows’ is depicting a potential coming together, the scene is devoid of people but the table is set and waiting. Reflecting the strong light and the nature of the tropics, the heightened colour and warped perspective creates a fictional space albeit parallel to reality.

Born in Athens and currently based in Singapore, Emi Avora is drawing subject matter from her everyday life in Asia as well as her Greek ancestry with a focus on the interior and still life. Her paintings are entering a dialog with modernist historical canons as well as ponder on our ambiguous relationship to colonial narratives, exoticism, the environment, motherhood and our everyday. Humour, curiosity and anxiety are elements that occupy her compositions. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes intense and with the use of light on the driving seat, her work allows space for invention, creating a gap between looking and making, between the real and the imaginary. Everyday observations become exaggerated through the use of colour and change of scale, focusing on what surprises her or grasps her attention. Stemming from reality, observed situations are weaved 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 colour, shape, pattern and composition.

Accolades

2002 | MA Fine Art, Royal Academy Schools, London, UK

1999 | BA (Hons) Fine Art, Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, UK
 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022 | Feasting with shadows, Nouri, Singapore, curated by Seet Yun Teng and Clara Che Wei Peh

2021 | My life in a Tropical Garden, Fullerton, Singapore, organised by Intersections Gallery

2021 |The Dream I’ve been seeking, ParkRoyal on Beach Road, Singapore, organised by Sutton Consulting

2020 | All Alone Together, SidexSide contemporary, online exhibition curated on sidexsidecontemporary.com