It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our co-founder Peter Sedgley, who died on Sunday 16 March 2025 at the age of 94.

Peter Sedgley was an artist who looked at the world with a particular kind of social conscience. He imagined the site of the artist’s studio as one of unbounded imagination – a prospective seat for social, political and economic change.

After an initial period in the army, as well as a career as an architect, Sedgley let loose and pursued his dream of being an artist full time. His first major solo exhibition in 1965, at the celebrated McRoberts & Tunnard Gallery in London, was a complete sell-out, with several works being placed in major institutions, including the Tate.

In 1968, with Bridget Riley and Peter Townsend, Sedgley founded SPACE; its acronym said it all: Space Provision (Artistic, Cultural, Educational). Setting up in a warehouse in East London at St Katharine Docks beside the Thames, it was the seed that led to a model of artist provision and advocacy in Britain, an argument for ‘space’ that is now emulated around the world. A key passion project of Sedgley’s was the Art Information Registry, a detailed index of artists’ work available for exhibition, performance, purchase and commission. In its heydey, it was used by SPACE members and tenants from Frank Auerbach to David Bowie.

Sedgley was a very specific kind of person, adventurous, seemingly not afraid of risk, but also a deep thinker. After all, the discipline required of his intricate incandescent paintings, which over time evolved to become sculptures, was something that he pursued largely independently. He was consistently innovating.

Right up until November last year, Sedgley was still a driving force, creating a major retrospective of his work at the Redfern Gallery in London in dialogue with former programme director and trustee at SPACE, Dr Omar Kholeif. Sedgley wanted to address the concept of the ‘enigma’ in his work, which felt appropriate considering that so little had been authored about an artist who Jasia Reichardt, former director of Whitechapel Gallery, London, noted was “the only British artist to have been associated with all of the movements dealing with illusion in the 1960s…Op art, kinetic art and light art.”

In the end, the exhibition was dedicated to Sedgley’s late wife, Inge, whose photographs are reproduced here to honour her as Peter would have wished.

In a film made in 1970 documenting SPACE’s early days at St Katharine Docks, a young Peter Sedgley stands beside the water’s edge surrounded by abandoned warehouses, Tower Bridge in the distance. Looking directly into the camera, he says “I want to tell you how it all started. It’s really a story about space… what artists need is space, not domestic space, a corner of a room where they can work, but something bigger, with a better feel to it.”

It is thanks to Peter’s pioneering vision that today SPACE remains the oldest continuously running artist studios provider in London.

With thanks and gratitude

Eline van der Vlist, Chief Executive
Dr Omar Kholeif
All the Trustees and Staff at SPACE