Charles Asprey

Charles Asprey
Charles Asprey
Born	(1971-03-25) 25 March 1971 London, England
Nationality	British

Charles Asprey is the publisher of the quarterly journal PICPUS^[1] and the founder of ArtSchool Palestine.,^[2] as well as being one of the trustees of The Henry Moore Foundation^[3] and the Michael Clark Company.^[4] For many years he was the co-owner and co-director of aspreyjacques, a London art gallery, with Alison Jacques, which introduced British audiences to young, emerging German artists.^[5][6][7] These included Thilo Heinzmann, Manfred Pernice, Christian Flamm and the late Michel Majerus. Since 2005 he has concentrated on curating and collecting; in 2009, he was invited to show part of his own art collection at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.^[8][9]

ArtSchool Palestine

ArtSchool Palestine (ASP), which Asprey co-founded with Sacha Craddock and Samar Martha, was set up in 2005 to promote and support Palestinian artists and aid their participation in international Contemporary Art exhibitions and biennales. ASP has held many events and exhibitions, including "As If By Magic", to which the British artist Damien Hirst lent his support.^[10] In addition to this, Asprey personally put together a library of 1,500 art books with the help of the bookdealer and publisher Walther Koenig and his son Franz Koenig of Cologne, which he donated to Bir Zeit University near Ramallah in Palestine.

ASP also offers exchanges with art schools and arranges exhibitions both in Palestine and other countries. In 2006, it launched a virtual studio project between students from Chelsea College of Art and Design (London) and young artists in the West Bank. Students and artists worked collaboratively over the Internet on an exhibition in each location, without leaving their homes.

Another aspect of its work is organising and financing artist-in-residences in other countries. Thus far these have included partnerships with Gasworks and Delfina Studios in London. As well as its work in Palestine, ASP is currently expanding its remit to include the Middle East region which remains relatively under-represented in the UK. An example of this was "IN FOCUS", a major exhibition about the Middle East in 2007 at Tate Modern, the Imperial War Museum, and the N4 Gallery.

Artschool Palestine is supported by, among others, the Arts Council England, the British Council, and Development, the Ford Foundation and the Karim Rida Said Foundation.

PICPUS

PICPUS is a free, quarterly journal with a focus on the arts, story-telling and criticism. Asprey and his co-founder and fellow editor Simon Grant claim it is part of a long tradition of small, independent British arts journals and periodicals that attempt to fill a gap left by mainstream arts publications. The pair cite as examples Coterie (1919–1921); Ray Magazine (1926–1927); The Apple (1920's) and ZG magazine from the 1980s.

The etymology of Picpus (pique-puce = flea-bite) comes from the region in Paris where many of the victims of the Reign of Terror in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution are buried. This part of the French capital inspired the artist Ian Hamilton Finlay to produce a number of artworks and, as a homage to him, the first issue of the newspaper was perfumed, referencing the manner in which 18th Century Parisians placed their handkerchiefs over their faces to blot out the smell while walking in the notoriously rank 12th arrondissement.

Asprey and Grant recently entered into a debate with Eugene Lebedev, the son of Alexander Lebedev, the owner of London Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers, about the dearth of exciting new British artists in the pages of the UK journal The Spectator.^[11]

Randolph Cliff residency

Randolph Cliff is an artist residency programme established by Asprey and Dr Clémentine Deliss^[12] in the heart of Edinburgh. Artists who have used the facility include Tom Burr, Marc-Camille Chaimowicz, Frances Stark, Manfred Pernice, Joseph Kosuth, David Schutter, Dexter Sinister, Sean Snyder, Christian Flamm, Thomas Struth, Mark Wallinger^[12] and Anna Bariball.

Curating/Gallerist

Asprey has been an active curator since 1994. He co-founded Ridinghouse Editions,^[13] a project space dedicated to the production of limited editioned works by mainstream artists, with Karsten Schubert and Thomas Dane. Its opening exhibition was with Jake and Dinos Chapman and was followed by shows with Keith Coventry, Peter Doig, Abigail Lane, Corban Walker, Alan Charlton and Michael Landy, among others.

In 1998 he co-founded the contemporary art gallery aspreyjacques. It is best remembered for its prescient introduction of young art from Berlin to the capital, giving many well-known German artists their first exposure in the UK. These included Daniel Pflumm, Manfred Pernice, Antje Majewski, Nader Ahriman, Christian Flamm, Thilo Heinzmann and Michel Majerus (1967–2002). Other notable artists represented included Paul Morrison, Graham Little, Ian Kiaer, Alessandro Raho and The Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe.

In 2006 Asprey and Kay Pallister curated “As If By Magic” at The Peace Centre in Bethlehem.^[14] This show enabled world famous international artists to show in a besieged part of the West Bank by inviting each of them to produce an idea for an artwork that could be remade on site, thereby getting around the Israeli Army checkpoint controls and circumventing the need to ship valuable art work in and out of the country. Artists who gave work to this project include Damien Hirst, Douglas Gordon, Martin Creed, Wolfgang Tillmans, Isa Genzken, Michael Fullerton, Jim Lambie, Michael Craig-Martin, Gary Rough, Nathan Coley, Simon Periton, Andreas Slominski.

In 2008 Asprey curated the exhibition of new work by Alessandro Raho at Thomas Williams Fine Art on Old Bond Street, London.^[15]

More recently he presented “Two Horizons: work from the collections of Charles Asprey and Alexander Schroeder” at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh in 2009 and curated “The Ground Around: idylls, earthworks and thunderbolts” at Vilma Gold Gallery in London (2010).^[16][17]

In April 2013 Asprey curated an exhibition, Michel Majerus: Beautiful Way, 25–28 April, at Knaackstrasse 12, Berlin^[18][19]

Philanthropy (selected)

Tate Gallery - Benefactor; Studio Voltaire - Trustee; South London Gallery - Building Patron; Camden Arts Centre - Patron; Nottingham Contemporary - Benefactor.

External links

• Artschool Palestine website
• Randolph Cliff Artist Residency
• Studio Voltaire
• South London Gallery
• Camden Arts Centre

Citations

Persondata
Name	Asprey, Charles
Alternative names
Short description	Publisher, curator, collector, philanthropist
Date of birth	1971-03-25
Place of birth	London, Great Britain
Date of death
Place of death