IMT GALLERY, Unit 2/210 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9NQ
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This is the 20th year of IMT, quite an achievement for a small not-for-profit space that favours boundary-pushing collaborative approaches, workshopping and experimental writing. Some theory often goes along with that, and the name – standing in for Image Music Text – comes from a book of essays by Roland Barthes. The gallery was founded in 2005 by Lindsay Friend and Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson; the latter moved to Iceland in 2023 – though not before he had distilled his experience into the Routledge book ‘Contemporary Exhibition-Making and Management: Curating IMT Gallery as a Hybrid Space’.
So now it’s just Lindsay – and her two Sphynx cats: those very distinctive creatures are kept in the rear of the two rooms. The key point of visitor protocol is not to let them through the adjoining door into the main space, which tends to be far from feline-proof! Show titles often reflect the adventurous nature of the exhibitions: take Benedict Drew’s ‘Trapped in a sticky shed with side chain compression’, or the group shows ‘Chop Leisure’ and ‘This is a Not-Me’. If I had to pick one exhibition it would be Carlos Noronha Feio’s ‘Plant Life of the Pacific World’, back in 2012: my more recent favourites among the artists I’ve seen there are Suzanne Treister; Paola Ciarska, who made a miniature painting of our house and art collection; Maggie Roberts and the collective 0cean Drift (of which she is part); and David Burrows (and the collective Plastique Fantastique, of which he is a part). Burrows it is who has the current show, ‘Spooky Affects At A Distance’, a multifarious examination of black holes as metaphor and (non)-substance.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each week, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting.
