ASC Gallery, 3 Loughborough Street, SE11 5RB
www.handbagfactory.org/asc-gallery Instagram: @ascgallery
The Artists Studio Company (ASC) is a charity, founded in 1995, that provides over 650 artists and makers with studios and workspaces across nine locations in London and plans to take on more. Since 2010, it has also operated the ASC Gallery as a showcase for public exhibitions, consistent with its aim of supporting creative activity. It’s in the nature of the properties available for such purposes that they tend to be temporary, and the gallery has consequently operated from three different main buildings. From 2010-15 it was in Erlang House, a now-demolished tower block near Blackfriars. Indeed, I recall fondly curating a show there in 2013, together with ASC artist Christina Niederberger.
From 2016 – 23 the gallery was part of the Thurlow Street studio complex near Elephant & Castle. Now it has relocated to the Vauxhall area, ASC having taken on a former Handbag Factory and converted it for workspace, gallery hire and exhibition use. Darren O’Brien has directed the exhibition programme across that whole history, and he has curated the current show: he describes ‘A Mark is a River’ as ‘a survey of confident abstraction in 2024’ in which nine artists ‘explore the ambiguity of mark-making and gesture’. O’Brien could have qualified as an artist but modestly omits himself in favour of a nice choice of nine others. It’s well worth visiting – I suggest combining it with Anna Perach’s excellent ongoing show at the nearby Gasworks. Be careful, though: ASC opens weekdays only. Dominic Beattie, known for his pattern-based abstractions, includes a new development at ASC – not just a painting, but a wall-sculptural painting derived from one of its motifs: ‘completely different and exactly the same’, as he put it to me.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each week, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting.
