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NOTHING PURE

ANA BENLLOCH
VILHJÁLMUR YNGVI HJÁLMARSSON
BELLADONNA PALOMA
ABDULLAH QURESHI
FRANKIE ROBERTS
RICHARD SQUIRES

13 OCTOBER - 19 NOVEMBER 2023

CURATED BY
MARK ROHTMAA-JACKSON

Invitation to a many:
IMT Gallery presents Nothing Pure, an exhibition of works by Ana Benlloch, Vilhjálmur Yngvi Hjálmarsson, Belladonna Paloma, Abdullah Qureshi, Frankie Roberts and Richard Squires, curated by Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson. The exhibition is a pool.

It is the year 2078 and IMT is 73 years old. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ they say, hands planted on hips, walking through the hole where one room was once knocked into another. They sneeze; twice. Then sit, typing into their phone. Instantly another phone in the room buzzes. Ha! It is your phone! The text reads:

‘It is 2023, and a skeleton’s future lies at a crossroads.’

It is an invite to an exhibition! You relax and reply with a skull emoji.
The exhibition title appears as a line in a book about IMT; a line stolen from the 1974 BBC ‘play for the day’ Penda’s Fen. We were talking about various things to do with canonicity and area studies, unsettled relations to infrastructure, philosophical fuzziness, messy diagrams, and subjects merged with objects… but these words now crack like paint on a surface that murmurs and drifts, slipping under to reveal the splendour of the wondrous things in a room once knocked through. If you come to this exhibition, and we hope that you do, there will be fragmentary fictional memories, reflections on a queer childhood of the 1980s, intimacies and isolations, and entities living in the drawings on toilet walls. It is 2023, and a skeleton’s future lies at a crossroads.
Another phone in the room buzzes. ‘One last thing…’ It is a meeting alert for an online appointment about the exhibition saved in your Outlook calendar. It says, ‘Zoom meeting about Nothing Pure.’ The full text of the meeting subject is obscured by the edges of the appointment box and so instead it reads ‘Zoom meeting about Nothing.’ It is 2023, and a skeleton’s future lies at a crossroads. Cage’s ‘Lecture on Nothing’ is now 73 years old. A performed text that was also an invitation for visiting bodies to be themselves, to go to sleep, to not be defined by their most immediate criteria, and to be alive. A thinking of knowing and not knowing; an invitation to a many. There are traces of that here. Because bodies are nothing pure. And because ‘nothing pure’ is also a deduction, an interpretation as well as a negation. Decisive and severe. You relax and send one last text… a child’s last reply:

‘Hecate is here.’ It is 2023, and you come to this exhibition in a room once knocked through. Hecate is here, holding snakes.

Anyway, ENOUGH! We would really love it if you’d be interested in coming to see the show.

Photo by Peter Otto

Photo by Peter Otto

Ana Benlloch works mainly with sticky, fluid, hypnotic language, in text art, performance, video, and audio works – entering drone trances, sculpting with affect, and making queer ritualistic magic. When language it is slipped open, it becomes a spell for undoing reality, releases uncertain monsters and euphoric chaos. Those who are excluded from the centre thrive in these edges, creating new, Queer, potentials.They create audio works under the name Underwater River, are a founder member of Aas art group, and also work with Plastique Fantastique.
Vilhjálmur Yngvi Hjálmarsson is an Icelandic artist based in Reykjavík. In his practice he works with drawings, videos, sculptures, sounds, installation, photographs. His process is often intuition based, staying with the works, experimenting and allowing the works to take the time they need. His works often come from a moment where something is noticed, it can be something he hears or sees or finds, something he finds beautiful or interesting or wonky or funny or stupid. Vilhjálmur is also a musician and one of the founding members of the music and art-collective post-dreifing. He has an upcoming exhibition in December at Kling & Bang, Reykjavík.
Belladonna Paloma is an artist, poet & witch living in Shetland, UK. She paints, tattoos, writes poetry, and makes computer games. Her work is into listening to faeries, how divination disturbs linear time, grief rituals, toilets and necromancy. Bella makes artwork primarily as acts of devotion. Most recently this devotion has been centred on the boglands of Shetland, and wetlands more generally, continuing her deep interest in the politics of waste. Bella is currently working on The Well of Sickness Shimmering, a video game about holy wells made with Uma Breakdown, and due to launch later this year at the 2023 Overkill festival in the Netherlands.
Abdullah Qureshi is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporates gestural, poetic, and hybrid methodologies, drawing from childhood memories, everyday surroundings, and intimate encounters to address autobiography, trauma, and sexuality through painting, filmmaking, and immersive events. Abdullah has exhibited internationally, including at the National Gallery of Art, Islamabad, Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore, Rossi & Rossi, London, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, and SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco. Abdullah is a Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Espoo, and Lecturer in Fine Art: Contemporary Practices at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Frankie Roberts works across a variety of mediums including performance, sculpture and animation. She builds seductive cocoons using hyper-real colours, lulling harmonies and vivid projections in which to explore murky depths beneath the surface of contemporary living. Her work often uses sweetness as a decoy to engage with darker themes such as clinging on to hope in the throes of vengefulness, disembodiment and our inevitable drift from innocence. Frankie was a digital residency artist with IMT Gallery in 2022 and performs with Plastique Fantastique. She has recently performed/exhibited at the Horse Hospital, London, WhereElse, Margate, IMT Gallery, London, LUVA Gallery, London, ASC Gallery, Alice Black Gallery, GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth and Cafe Oto, London.
Richard Squires is a London-based visual artist and academic who works predominantly with film, drawing and animation. In 1998, he set up the comic art project Let Me Feel Your Finger First which disseminated comics, animated shorts and live art focused on a defective cartoon family. His work is shown internationally in galleries, including the ICA, IMT Gallery and studio1.1; broadcast, including an Animate Projects commission for Channel 4; and at film festivals including Queer Lisboa, London Film Festival, BFI Flare and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson is a curator and educator, who also works as a collaborative artist with the art collectives that have included NEUSCHLOSS, Blue Mountain Arcturus, TOTALLER, Earbarotrauma and Plastique Fantastique. He lives in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, where he is the Director of the LungA School, an independent, artist-led institution and situation. Mark’s recent book, Contemporary Exhibition-Making and Management: Curating IMT Gallery as a Hybrid Space, was published by Routledge in 2023. A unique insight into contemporary curation and management at IMT Gallery, it illustrates and evaluates contemporary issues and challenges in curatorial initiatives and exhibition-making strategies. Find out more

SLUICE MAGAZINE
GUEST EDITED BY IMT

To accompany the exhibition ‘Nothing Pure’, the Autumn 2023 edition of Sluice Magazine is guest edited by IMT!

Join us for the launch at IMT Gallery on Thursday 16 November from 7 – 10pm.

‘The theme of this edition of Sluice Magazine is an embracing of themelessness. Not as indifference, even in the way that John Cage or Duchamp embraced indifference, but as a very contemporary necessity: a themelessness that is born out of live-work invasions, the distractions of the digital, the increasing awareness of neurodivergence and other rejections of narratives of purity. […] The contributors to this edition of the magazine are each producers of things that evade purity. We all are of course, but these are, I think, great examples of those who do so against the attempts that discourse makes to advocate for the pure. A magazine is a basic communication formula, but this one, as an art magazine made by artists, is also trying to be a container for things that seep beyond the confines of imposed structures. Survival is at stake. These are representations of people. This is nothing pure. A moderate breeze among light clouds.’ – Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson
Contributors: Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson – guest editor, Frankie Roberts, Belladonna Paloma, Lucy A. Sames, Abdullah Qureshi, Ana Benlloch, Blue Mountain Arcturus, LungA School, Alistair Gentry, Vilhjálmur Yngvi Hjálmarsson, Richard Squires and CHK Design.

🎉 SPECIAL OFFER! 🎉 During the magazine launch, when you purchase a copy, enjoy a 20% discount and receive a limited edition sticker sheet created by our talented contributors, celebrating this special collaboration. These stickers are available while supplies last. Be sure to explore the exhibition as well!

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