Nothing Pure

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.