Ashley Thorpe was born in Inverness in 1972.
Any relation to local monsters has since been disproved.

After a family relocation to the West Country and attending local schools he studied film and fine art in Canterbury.

It was here that he met Mick Grierson, Mark Stevens and Ben Burgess, friendships that would later result in the ‘Sharkitekt’ audio / visual art collective. Encouraged by their first films winning the Kent open film award and being nominated for the Sky scholarship they progressed to promotional videos and documentaries. (The collective is still going strong. See www.sharkitekt.com for details).
After graduating with a first class degree Ashley moved to Manchester wherein he not only found work at BBC Manchester, creating sequences for their ‘Fortean Times’ inspired BBC / Learning channel venture ‘Weird Almanac’, but also created an ongoing friendship with David Kerekes of ‘Headpress’ / Critical Vision publishing.

After a number of commissions Ashley moved to London to develop a series of Sharkitekt projects (including ‘The Vampire’ animation recently shown at the 6th Indy Panorama festival in Thessaloniki, Greece) and continue work upon his first novel ‘Junction’.

In recent years Ashley has lived and worked in London and Athens working on projects as diverse as graphics for Derren Brown’s ‘Trick of the Mind 2’, various film projects as assistant director / art director and a comic strip for ‘Babel’ Athens.

He lists amongst his influences the work of William Burroughs, David Lynch, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, William Blake, Louis le Brocquy, Dave McKean, Francis Bacon, Goya, Frank Miller, Eno era David Bowie, Greek myth, Enki Bilal, German Expressionism, surrealism, horror movies and Manga.