About

Yuria Okamura is a Melbourne-based artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting and installation. Her work conflates botanical images and geometric forms, inspired by the symbolic use of geometry in architecture and ornament of diverse religious and mystical traditions. Through this combination, Yuria explores the similarities between patterns found in nature and geometric symbols used in various metaphysical imaginings. In this way, she examines how geometry might aid in evoking holistic interpretations of the natural world as seen through the lens of animism and herbalism. Yuria also employs wall drawings inspired by religious architecture in an attempt to emulate the immersive and meditative quality of sacred spaces. Presenting works on paper that interweave geometric and botanical images within spatial wall drawings, she metaphorically enshrines nature within imagined architecture. Her work envisions garden-like contemplative spaces where nature, culture, and the physical and metaphysical worlds come together. In doing so, Yuria invites the viewer to see plant life with a renewed sense of wonder.

Yuria holds an MFA (Research) from the University of Melbourne and a BFA (Honours) from RMIT University. She has been awarded multiple Australia Council Grants, Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship, Ursula Hoff Institute Drawing Award, LaTrobe Art Institute Writer’s Block Commission, Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award, RMIT Honours Travelling Endowment Scholarship, and recently shortlisted for the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, National Works on Paper Award, Paul Guest Drawing Prize, Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award, Ravenswood Australian Women’s Award and Waverly Art Prize. Yuria has been selected to participate in local and international residencies such as 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 her work extensively at public, commercial and artist-run galleries, including The National Gallery of Victoria, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, La Trobe Art Institute, Incinerator Gallery, Daine Singer, NotFair Art Fair, MARS Gallery, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Anna Pappas Gallery, Five Walls, Kunstraum Tapir (Germany), Langford 120, Seventh Gallery, Japan Foundation Gallery (Sydney) and Mølla På Grim (Norway). Her work has been featured in international art magazines including Fukt (Germany) and Create Magazine (USA).

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land where I work and live. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I celebrate the stories, culture and traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders of all communities who also work and live on this land.