Emi Avora

Born in Greece and currently based between Greece and Singapore, Emi Avora is drawing subject matter from her life in Asia as well as her Greek ancestry with a focus on a combination of interior spaces, still life and landscape. By entering a dialog with earlier historical canons, her paintings ponder on how to reconcile our everyday existence with larger cosmic forces that govern our environment, our relationships, our past and our future. The search for her own rediscovered ‘place’ and ‘identity’ as well as curiosity for the shapes that surround her are elements that occupy her compositions. Often her paintings present encounters or ‘conversations’ between seemingly disparate objects or symbols. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes intense and with the use of light on the driving seat, her work employs a range of heightened palettes to allow the viewer space for reinvention, creating a gap between looking and making, between the real and the imaginary. By the act of re-imagining, Avora enters into an escapist realm albeit parallel to the real.

 

Everyday observations blend into complex formations and become exaggerated through the use of colour and change of scale, focusing on what surprises her or grasps her attention. Reality is juxtaposed with mythology and 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.