The tower blocks of Nine Elms feel like cold, empty citadels in a futuristic enclave in search of a soul. Now, the area might begin to find it with the arrival, at last, of the new Matt’s Gallery space. Matt’s is a legendary London contemporary art institution. It was founded in 1979 by Robin Klassnik (it was named after his dog at the time, Matt E. Emulsion) and has played a major role in the development of experimental contemporary art in London, particularly in the fields of installation art and film and video, showing key figures like Susan Hiller, Mike Nelson and Richard Wilson, among countless others, over the years. It’s fairly unusual in that it’s a charity and funded by the Arts Council, yet represents artists and sells their work. It has always felt much more like a public institution than a commercial gallery and its arrival in South London, after many years in the East, has been anticipated for some time.
One artist who has been a consistently engaging presence on Matt’s roster is Lindsay Seers, who in recent years has been collaborating with Keith Sargent. The duo open Matt’s Nine Elms gallery with a characteristically complex, beguiling, and marvellous multi-part show. The first object you see as you enter Matt’s is a curious, bright yellow polyhedron, and a clue to its significance is in the gallery’s loo: a detail from the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I (1514), one of the greatest prints of all time. Within Dürer’s woodcut is a strange geometric shape, a polyhedron, which has been the source of endless art-historical pondering, prompting everything from mathematical to alchemical readings. It remains something of a mystery more than 500 years later, and that sense of the strange and uncanny permeates Seers and Sargent’s work. Don’t expect to emerge with a clear sense of what this exhibition means, but do expect to be absorbed and even enthralled.
