Bio

Yuria Okamura is a Melbourne-based artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting and installation. Okamura holds an MFA (Research) from the University of Melbourne and a BFA (Honours) from RMIT University. She has received a number of awards, scholarships and residencies including Australia Council Career Development Grant, Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship, Ursula Hoff Institute Drawing Award, Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award, RMIT Honours Travelling Endowment Scholarship, Sanskriti Kendra Residency (India), The Studios at MASS MoCA (USA), Abbotsford Convent Studio Residency (Australia), Bayside City Council Residency (Australia) and Takt Artist Residency (Germany). She has exhibited extensively, including Incinerator Gallery (VIC), Margaret Lawrence Gallery (VIC), La Trobe Art Institute (VIC), C3 Contemporary Art Space (VIC), Anna Pappas Gallery (VIC), Five Walls Projects (VIC), Tributary Projects (ACT), Kunstraum Tapir (Berlin, Germany), Langford 120 (VIC), Seventh Gallery (VIC), Japan Foundation Gallery (NSW), and Mølla På Grim (Kristiansand, Norway). Her work has been featured on international magazines including Fukt (Germany) and Create Mag (USA).

Statement

Yuria Okamura’s drawing practice brings together and reinterprets diverse metaphysical imaginings from across cultures and histories through the utopian language of geometry and diagrammatic aesthetics. She maps and reconfigures geometric forms that reference patterns in nature, esoteric symbolism, alchemical diagrams, religious architecture and decoration, and spiritualist abstract painting.

Okamura’s most recent body of work incorporates botanical images in an attempt to enshrine nature within imagined architecture of metaphysical possibilities. Positing the garden as a site of harmony, she envisions a garden-like contemplative space where nature and culture, and the physical and metaphysical worlds come together. In doing so, Okamura hopes to advocate for meaningful interpretations of the natural world.