§ CHARLES AVERY (SCOTTISH 1973-) UNTITLED (FAMILY GROUP) - 2001 Signed and dated lower right, pencil, ink and coloured pencil (73cm x 88cm (28.75in x 34.5in)) Note: Charles Avery is one of Scotland’s most highly regarded contemporary artists. He has shown at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on a number of occasions; he was commissioned to make a public work to be sited in Waverley Station for the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2015; and he represented Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. His work can also be found in numerous public collections including Tate London, Kunstmuseum, The Hague and the David Roberts Art Foundation, London. These two drawings relate to Avery’s long-term project The Islanders, a painstakingly detailed alternative world that the artist has created. Through drawings, texts and objects Avery describes the inhabitants, architecture, philosophies, customs and idiosyncrasies of this imagined world, part Scottish Hebrides, part East London. The Island sits at the centre of an archipelago, its capital the port city of Onomatopoeia, described by Richard Ingleby as ‘originally a stepping off point for pioneers and travellers, turned bustling boomtown, turned citadel, turned depression ravaged slum, turned regenerated city of culture’. In these two drawings, we see the denizens of the Island at rest, a riff on the traditional art historical motif of ‘bathers’, albeit transferred to hotel pools and public baths. Their swimwear, has a time- and space-shifting quality, taking us back to the 70s and possibly to the Eastern Bloc, yet at the same time, the poses and expressions feel very contemporary, with their combination of awkwardness and poise. Elements of the Islanders project have recently been exhibited at the 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019),the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerela (2017) and at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, as part of the NOW series of exhibitions (2019).