ASC Hilbert: An international exchange

As our exchange with Berlin’s HilbertRaum continues with an exhibition at the ASC Gallery, we reflect on a series of ASC Hilbert projects over the past year.

ASC Hilbert is a collaborative series connecting London’s ASC Studios and Gallery with Berlin’s HilbertRaum. More than just a series of shows, ASC Hilbert is a surface of contact for the art communities of the two cities spanning the course of several years. 

The aim of this long term collaboration is to not only introduce exciting fresh art to a new audience, but also help facilitate lasting connections between art professionals in the two cities, and thus support the development of early and mid-career artists. To contribute to this aim, ASC Hilbert has begun its international exchange with a series of events across both venues in 2022.

In April 2022, the first exhibition – titled A Faint Ground – kicked off the project in Berlin at the  HilbertRaum gallery. ASC artists Karolina Albricht and Darren O’Brien travelled to Berlin and exhibited with German artists Heike Kelter, Hannah Rath and Betinna Weiss.

“Recently I was trying to remember the feeling of fresh grass under bare feet. The sensation of the grass between my toes, its delicate and earthy feeling, cool and green. To some degree looking at artworks can be like the feeling of fresh grass under bare feet. Eyes register the artwork as a whole, taking it in, searching for links, but then sense the surface, its unique detail, its thread, its pitch. With our eyes we walk the faint ground like our feet feel the fresh grass. In this age of uncertainty what is certain is the ground beneath us.” – Darren O’Brien, ASC Gallery

A Faint Ground, May 2022, HilbertRaum

Also shown at HilbertRaum was Naked Flames, an exhibition in August that presented a dialogue of disciplines in “a world where everything flows and nothing is still”.

Artists from ASC Brixton Studios – Georgios Mavridis, Ania Tomaszewska- Nelson, and Timothy Haccius – travelled from London to Berlin with their artwork to exhibit. The Berlin artists who featured in the exhibition were Jurgen Grewe, Mirka Raito, Hildergard Skowasch and Isabelle Fein.

Naked Flames, August 2022, HilbertRaum

The return leg of this ongoing project, ‘We Were Made in the Dark’, exhibited at ASC Gallery from late October to early November. The event received funding from Finnish organisation Frame Finland and aims to shift focus from the negatives of a post-Brexit landscape and foster pan-European connections that give opportunities to artists, and vice versa.

Berlin-based Finnish artist Niina Lehtonen Braun came to London with her art performance group, Jokaklubi, to show a new series of drawings and to take part in Jokaklubi’s ‘The Theory Show’ performance. Alongside this, Harriet Hill performed and exhibited one of her wearable sculptures. ASC artists Laura Wormell and Adam Hennessey showed new paintings and drawings.

Jokaklubi performance, We Were Made in the Dark, October 2022, ASC Gallery

ASC looks forward to continuing this exchange with HilbertRaum, and we are excited to see future iterations of events and cross-collaboration between artists through this project.