Onomatopoeia ─ Its People and Surroundings

An illustrated portrait of the people and culture of Onomatopoeia capital city of the (fictional) Island which is a municipality that's grown from an outpost into a regenerated city of culture. Part of the author's ongoing art project, this book can be read as a meditation on the central themes of philosophy and art, as well as colonization.

Born in Oban, Scotland in 1973, Charles Avery lives and works in London. Since 2004, he has devoted his practice to the description of a fictional Island which he continues to elaborate, with its own population, customs and cosmology, nature and architecture, expressed in the form of large-scale drawings, sculptures, installations, texts and moving images. This ongoing body of work created within a specific framework is rooted in Avery’s own life and upbringing on the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland. The Island is located at the centre of an archipelago of innumerable constituents. The gateway to the Island is the town of Onomatopoeia ? once the stepping off point of the pioneers who first came to the place, turned colonial outpost, turned boom town, bustling metropolis, depression ravaged slum, to regenerated city of culture and tourist destination.