My friend Jonathan Harvey, who has died aged 74, was for 44 years joint chief executive of Acme Studios, a charity he co-founded with David Panton in 1972 that provides affordable spaces for artists.
Acme achieved this miracle by leveraging from the Greater London council the short-term occupancy of condemned dwellings and redundant commercial and industrial buildings – everything from an entire street of derelict houses to a meat pie factory, a hotel, a foundry, a Cornish net loft and an abattoir.
I met Jonathan in 1977 at a show at the Acme Gallery, a converted banana warehouse in Covent Garden. The gallery was an offshoot of Acme Studios and a place of almost continuous mayhem – the Kipper Kids stomped and grunted, in heavy boots and jockstraps, Kerry Trengove tunnelled his way out of the basement, and Stephen Cripps drove his audience coughing and spluttering into the street, having nearly set fire to the building. There were quieter, more contemplative shows, but Jonathan’s dictum held true, that the gallery should exhibit work “in a way that created as direct a confrontation as possible between the public and the artist, without interpreting it”.
When the gallery lease expired, Jonathan led the successful lottery bids that enabled Acme to purchase two buildings, and used this equity to finance and buy a third. A novel planning gain strategy – embedding affordable workspace within new-build residential developments – achieved spectacular results, working with the biggest commercial housebuilders. Jonathan commissioned HAT Projects to design a new block of studios alongside the Royal Opera House production facilities at Thurrock in Essex.
Jonathan also co-founded Television South-West, and for 10 years from 1982 worked as their arts consultant and associate producer on arts and experimental programmes for Channel 4. He co-curated two international site-specific art projects and worked with Tony Foster and James Lingwood to extend the concept of installation beyond the gallery.
In 1993, Jonathan was invited to chair the board of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, and oversaw a major refurbishment and extension. In 2000 he joined the independent review to assess the feasibility of the proposed development of the new Tate Modern. He served on numerous committees, undertook consultancies, and assessed lottery capital projects on behalf of Arts Council England.
Born in Plymouth, to Ailsa (nee Rae) and Raymond Harvey, a bank manager, Jonathan grew up in Devon. He attended Plymouth college and Brockenhurst grammar school, before studying art at Reading University, graduating in 1971. As a postgraduate at Chelsea School of Art, he was tutored by Ian Stephenson.
Jonathan loved cricket and real tennis, had a quizzical sense of fun, and was passionate about Cornwall. His marriage to Rosemary Sharp, in 1973, ended in divorce. In 2006 he married Rita Harris, who died of cancer in 2012.
In 2014 Jonathan and David were both appointed OBE, and in 2016 Jonathan was made an honorary fellow of University of the Arts London.
This was the moment that he decided to step back from Acme and move to Suffolk, with his partner, Lesley Lauriston.
He is survived by Lesley, and by his sister, Suzanne.
