Anna Avery (b. 2000, Devon, UK) is a Kent based contemporary artist whose practice centres on playing with the material properties of fabric and embroidery to create work on the expanded boundary between textile, painting, and sculpture. By using a sewing machine to draw with stitch intuitively, yet with an internal logic attentive to texture and the sensation of colour, she mixes the languages of abstraction and figuration to produce ambiguous, evocative, and painterly compositions that alter and intensify space in different ways.
Her current practice is concerned with concepts of landscape, topographies, and a felt sense of place through intricately embroidered textile surfaces. Time spent in the landscape of Devon where she is from, the edgeland of Dungeness, the idyll of Iona, and the mixed natural and urban environment in Edinburgh all influence her work. She draws from these sites, as well as spaces imagined, dreamt, or half-remembered to make work that suggests a different approach to understanding landscapes, both internal and external, which for her are explored and secured temporally through the repetitive and meditative process of stitching.
With a focus on sustainability at the core of her practice, she gathers fabric and thread from second-hand, scrap, and discarded resources to make work that celebrates and respects the natural world it depends upon.
CV
Education
2020 – 2024: BA(hons) First Class: Painting, Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh
Awards
2024 – runner up: Astaire Art Prize
2019 – shortlisted: John Downton Art Awards
Current Exhibitions
2025 – Drawn to London, St. Margaret’s House, Bethnal Green, 1st April – 12th May
2025 – Your Work Here, The Amelia Scott Centre, 14th February – 1st June
Past exhibitions
2024 – Graduate Show, Edinburgh College of Art, 31st May – 9th June
2024 – Aint nobody got time for that, 4th year show, Edinburgh College of Art
2023 – The Fourth Wall, 4th year show, Edinburgh College of Art
2023 – Library of Ideas at BOOKMARKS Festival, Edinburgh College of Art
Anna Avery 