Charles Asprey (publisher)

Charles Asprey (born 1971) has been involved in the UK contemporary art scene since the early 1990s and continues to work with established and emerging artists as a publisher, collector and exhibition organiser.
Asprey is currently a Trustee of the in London and a Trustee of The Henry Moore Foundation. He is also Chair of the Henry More Grants Committee which disperses over £500,000 per annum in support of academics, artists, publishers, curators and museum collections.
Picpus Press
Asprey and his fellow editor Simon Grant founded PICPUS in 2009. It is a free, A6 format journal with a focus on the arts, story-telling and criticism, claiming that 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. Issue No26 was recently published with future issues on environmental texts since 1850 and a special issue highlighting the extraordinary legacy of Ukrainian-born artists.
Additional private publishing
Asprey has published several monographs most recently a book on TENANT OF CULTURE (aka artist Hendrieke Schimmel) in collaboration with Anotonia Marsh of Soft-Opening Gallery London. This publication won the 2020 ‘Most Beautiful Swiss Book Award’ and was designed by Studio ARD London.
A monograph by artist Amelia Barrat will be released in 2022.
Randolph Cliff residency
The Randolph Cliff was an artist residency programme established by Asprey and Dr Clémentine Deliss 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 and Anna Barriball.
Cabinet Gallery building
In Spring 2016, Cabinet Gallery moved to a new building on Tyers Street in the heart of Vauxhall. The original plan to relocate dates back nearly a decade when Cabinet directors Martin McGeown and Andrew Wheatley began a conversation with their friend and collaborator Charles Asprey about designing a permanent location for the gallery.
Trevor Horne Architects in collaboration with Asprey, who financed the development, Cabinet's directors and several of the gallery artists, conceived a twelve-sided detached brick building which neighbours Vauxhall City Farm to the south with westerly views across Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to The Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
Charles Asprey Tyers Street (CA-TS), a project space, is also housed inside the building. Its first show was a presentation of book designs by Paul Nash. Other exhibitions from Asprey’s collection have included Carol Rhodes, Tom Burr, Thilo Heinzmann and Isa Genzken.
Curating/gallerist
Asprey has been an active curator since 1994. He co-founded Ridinghouse Editions, 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 1997 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 Graham Little, Ian Kiaer, Alessandro Raho and The Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe.
, which Asprey co-founded with Sacha Craddock and Samar Martha, was a website and office set up in 2005 to promote and support Palestinian artists and aid their participation in international Contemporary Art exhibitions and biennales and obtain Travel Grants and University positions. ASP has held many events and exhibitions, including As If By Magic in Bethlehem, to which major international artists including the British artist Damien Hirst and 25 others lent his support. In addition to this, Asprey personally put together a library of 800 art books with the help of the book-dealer and publisher Walther Koenig and his son Franz Koenig of Cologne, which he donated to Bir Zeit University near Ramallah in Palestine.
In 2006 Asprey and Kay Pallister curated "As If By Magic" at The Peace Centre in Bethlehem. 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.
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).
In April 2013 Asprey curated an exhibition, 'Michel Majerus: Beautiful Way', 25-28 April, at Knaackstrasse 12, Berlin.

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