Ava Grauls

Ava Grauls is a South African/Belgian artist and performer based in London. Her practice is inspired by her experience of multiple migrations into new national norms and disappearing histories. Her current research considers the management of memories.

Grauls has exhibited in Hiroshima, London, Edinburgh, and Dundee. In 2019, she was awarded the Moira McGregor Bursary for a residency at Studio Kura in Japan. In 2021, she won the Royal Scottish Academy David Mitchie Travel Award. Her film "Obliterated" was selected for the Lisbon Art Weekend Programme in 2022. Grauls' painting was selected for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2023, and she will be working with the Edge artist collective to host an exhibition in Hiroshima City in October, funded by the British Sasakawa Foundation.

She graduated from Duncan Jordanstone College of Art in 2021 in Dundee, before relocating to London to finish her masters at the RCA.

Grauls' work spans many traditional forms of making, such as painting, performance, video, songwriting, and publication. She is interested in exploring the relationships between memory, identity, and place. Her work is often playful and humorous, but it also deals with serious themes such as migration, colonialism, and the legacies of trauma.

For her RCA Graduate exhibition, Grauls juxtaposes her childhood memories with the hidden history of a British-owned asbestos mine in Swaziland (now Eswatini). Her uncanny feeling of trusting her memories but rarely finding evidence in the world became bewildering. These moments of social forgetfulness brought with them a new, strange nostalgia that had not dealt with past legacies of imperialism.

Her performance “Empire on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” is presented inside a glass box, juxtaposed with the painting “SOUTH! Towards the Dark Continent,”. Her work seeks to present two retellings of history in the same space. Her experience of these “schizophrenic moments” is what she feels is a common way of seeing and thinking for the 'forever immigrant'.

This performance could not have been possible without my sister: Carla Grauls.

End of the performance. Perspex box filled with packing peanuts + Britannia

Script

"The Empire loves our citizens!

Those at home …

and those at the farthest frontiers.

That serve most ardently

to hold the centre aloft,

above the degradation of savagery,

towards the administrations,

of these civilisations.

Building economies!

Building cities!

Building governments!

What we have thus far built

We have loved!"

Britannia

A4 screen printed publication. This book fits between journal and school textbooks, citing the research that inspired the script. The publication includes interviews of previous miners, House of Commons and Lords Debates, and artefacts of the past.

"My experience seemed inconsistent with the documented history available. The time my family stayed on the mine did not match up with records of T&N selling off of the land. I felt I was imagining my past. However, after talking with my sister and my father, I began to trust my memories and trust less in the official records available. I felt like some form of structure was trying to manage my memories. "

SOUTH! Towards the Dark Continent - 29 of 35 oil and watercolour on canvas 50 x 50cm

SOUTH! Towards the Dark Continent - 25 of 35 oil and watercolour on canvas 50 x 50cm

SOUTH! Towards the Dark Continent - 29 of 35 oil and watercolour on canvas 50 x 50cm

SOUTH! Towards the Dark Continent – 35 paintings made with oil and watercolour on canvas 50 x 50cm

Abstract paintings from maps of power.

Grauls uses land survey maps, geological maps, border maps and the silent, censored maps as the visual representation of how power moves through society and how the old story of invasion recycles itself into new causes.

Swaziland Mozambique – 70 x 120cm oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas 2022

Swaziland Transvaal – 70 x 120cm oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas 2022

Swaziland Natal – 70 x 120cm oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas 2022

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 1 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 2 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 3 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 4 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 5 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 6 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 7 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 8 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 9 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 10 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 11 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Territory Formerly Known as 'the Great Britain' 12 of 12 – Oil, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 40 x 40cm, 2023

Silent state 1 – Oil, Acrylic, And Watercolour On Canvas, 110 x 92cm, 2022

Silent State 2 – Oil, Acrylic, And Watercolour On Canvas, 110 x 92cm, 2022

Becoming a public nuisance

Ava Grauls began making songs and performances in Hiroshima, in 2011. Her videos have become absurd remarks on social norms, frustrations and exposing the subtext of the 'unsaid'.

Performance at the Ivy House, London – https://avagrauls.com/performance-video

Elevator Music – 2023 Elevator Music 2’16

Your Right to Buy! – 2023 Landsale Informercial 4’18

Electrohands – Singing about the gendered expectations of 'good sex'. 2016 Electrohands 3’18. Written and recorded in my house. Performed in the Studio at the RCA. Technician Roddy Canas

music performance spoken-word-performance

Ava Grauls in front of 'Border Wars'- 110 x 92cm, Oil, Acrylic, And Watercolour on Canvas, www.avagrauls.com, IG @avagrauls

Ava Grauls

Script

Abstract paintings from maps of power.

Becoming a public nuisance

Social

About

Royal College of Art