Acme Studios
Acme, also styled ACME, is a charity based in London, England which provides affordable studio and living space, residencies and awards for visual artists. Its studios are known as Acme Studios. It formerly provided two gallery spaces, first the Acme Gallery and later the Acme Project Space.
History
Acme was founded in 1972 by Jonathan Harvey and David Panton, who both received an OBE for services to the arts in 2014. Harvey and Panton led a group of London graduates, finding at that time there were empty factories, warehouses and other properties available to provide cheap spaces for artists to work and live in, albeit temporarily.Acme Project Space
From June 2009 to December 2015, the Acme Project Space provided both UK-based and international artists on Acme's Residencies & Awards programme with a project and exhibition space, to show new work and engage in a critical dialogue with a wider audience. The Project Space featured artists such as David Blandy, Vishwa Shroff, Luke McCreadie, Clare Price, and Marianna Simnett.Today
Acme provides studio and living space, residencies and awards for visual artists.Acme supports 800 artists with affordable studio space across 15 sites in Greater London. It also provides space for Auto Italia South East, East London Printmakers, Kinetika, Fieldnotes, and the Central Saint Martins Associate Studio Programme.
Residencies and awards
As well as artist studio provision, Acme also offers artist support, and hundreds of artists have benefited from its programme since 1982. In 2014, Australian artist Tom Polo took up an associate artist residency with Acme.Acme runs a number of residencies and awards in collaboration with partners, including Slade School of Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, Australia Council for the Arts, Conseil des [arts et des lettres du Québec], and Khazanah Nasional, catered for emerging Malaysian artists. The Khazanah Nasional Associate Artist Residency Programme has invited renowned industry professionals such as Vanessa Murrell to help develop and prepare young artists for the next growth phase in their professional careers. The programme also includes Acme's five-year Fire Station Residency, established in 1997, whose previous recipients include Martin Creed, Lindsay Seers, Erika Tan, Haroon Mirza, Jonathan Baldock, Samson Kambalu, George Charman and Noel Paine.