Aspex Gallery (also known as "aspex") is a contemporary visual art gallery located in the Gunwharf Quays area of Portsmouth.
Formed in 1981 as the exhibitions arm of Art Space Portsmouth in a converted chapel in Brougham Road, Southsea, the gallery became a separate legal entity in the early 1990s. It then moved to The Vulcan Building (a former Royal Navy storehouse) in Gunwharf Quays in 2006. The name 'Aspex' is derived from 'Art Space Exhibitions'. Art Space Portsmouth, who provide studio space to local artists, continue to be based at the Brougham Road site.
The gallery specialises in supporting artists at the early stages of their career. Notable artists that have exhibited at the gallery include Richard Wilson in 1983 and Helen Chadwick. The work exhibited by Chadwick, Ego Geometria Sum, is now part of the Tate collection.
The Ultrasauros (also known as the "Southsea Dinosaur")
More recently, Aspex was instrumental in bringing Heather & Ivan Morison's 'Luna Park' to Portsmouth in August 2010, in conjunction with Chapter, Cardiff, firstsite, Colchester and Safle. Part of the installation included a 53 foot recreation of an Ultrasauros on Southsea Common. The Ultrasauros was a dinosaur 'discovered' by the palaeontologist James A. Jensen in the 1970s. He claimed the set of giant bones that belonged to the largest dinosaur that ever lived. More than a decade later, however, it was revealed that his discovery was in fact a chimera, composed of bones from two different brachiosaur-type species.
The Ultrasauaros took three years to plan and build. It was constructed by thirty factory workers in Serbia in a small village outside the city of Kragujevac in Serbia. The Morisons' construction team of engineers, welders, assemblers and model makers were all ex-employees of the Zastava car factory (where Yugo cars were manufactured) that was Kragujevac's main employer, and Luna Park was made from the same materials used to model Yugos.
It was brought to the UK in August 2010. It attracted over 100,000 people during the exhibition, and the people of Portsmouth were so taken with the dinosaur that the leader of the local council, Gerald Vernon-Jackson hoped to make it a permanent fixture following a tour to firstsite in Colchester and Chapter in Cardiff
However, at the end of September 2010, in the week before it was due to be moved, the Ultrasauros caught alight and burned down overnight. Initial suspicions were that the fire was arson, but it was later determined to be due to an electrical fault.