In the Interim
Bombay gets an alternative arts space — for now.
In December, I caught up with Tara Kelton as she prepared for a solo exhibition at an all new arts space in Bombay due to open the following week. (LOVER Studio documented her previous show at Mumbai Art Room at the very beginning of 2020)
Interim Space is an artist-run alternative arts venue, inhabiting — for now — a previously abandoned warehouse in a leafy estate in Worli, to be demolished and redeveloped in the near future. Co-founded by artists and friends Simran Ankolkar and Yaazd Contractor, the current site informed its concept with the duo hoping “to carry Interim forward as a nomadic project that could move with us wherever life takes us.”
Tara’s show Content marked the launch of its first iteration. The artist is currently exhibiting four video works including a video installation called Homeward which uses a projector fitted onto a roomba in motion, and an archive of her books. “Two of these books No Help From Epson and TWIN SHARING I made during the last two years where I indulged a completionist impulse I have, to click on every page or save every image,” Tara tells me. The former is a collection of images that she first discovered while attempting to shop for a printer on Amazon, while the latter is a tome of 1000 fascinating images of barely distinguishable beds for rent in Bangalore, found on ‘no broker’ Facebook groups and websites. The shed’s windows are covered in “emoji on vinyl”.
Like LOVER, Tara is “really interested in non traditional gallery models and repurposing spaces that are designed for other types of interaction like when I co-curated that show in the Croma store”.
Read our interview with Simran below, with inputs from Yaazd.
First things first, who makes up Interim Space?
Yaazd and I conceived the idea and place. We kind of knew each other before in Bombay but became much closer friends at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Yaazd mainly worked in the Art & Tech department as well as neon, print and sculpture. I predominantly did printmaking, bookmaking and ceramics. Today we both run Interim Space together, also with the help of some of our peers/friends, and have our own practices and work lives when we’re not at Interim.
Apart from the two of us, we’re also helped out by Naomi Shah and Rudradaman Singh, who we also went to college with. Rudradaman just did a workshop at the space.
We also have Yaazd’s sister Zoish and a really close friend of his Shahram Randeria who are both architects who help us out with the space. They’re all very much a part of Interim.
How did Interim come about?
Yaazd and I had been ideating for a while of having some kind of shared space together, perhaps a studio where we could also host art events, listening rooms, workshops etc. But in conversation what we felt the lack of in the city was the kind of non-institutional, DIY-style artist-run spaces that we were exposed to in college.
A lot of our influences for wanting to showcase multidisciplinary work at Interim came from that environment as it was a very multidisciplinary learning space. Amidst a city art school we saw a lot of DIY spaces or pop up shows in people's homes or temporary setups. Spaces that drew community, and that felt non-intimidating.
But despite all these pre-conversations and notions, I'd say Interim didn’t exist until the space did, or that it was conceived based on the space we ended up finding! So when we started looking for a space we were directed to a small pocket in Worli that we didn’t even know existed — an old estate that had some abandoned offices. Even the surrounding area is quite unique, kind of tucked away from the city and with a huge banyan tree right outside our doorstep. The only catch was that the property is to go for redevelopment soon, so it would only be lent to us temporarily. This was where the idea started brewing.
Interim is very much tied to its temporality, and we wouldn’t have approached the space this way had it not been in limbo itself. We also thought repurposing a space like this into an art space, which gives it multiple different interim lives in the form of exhibitions, events, shows was a beautiful way to embrace the situation. That’s also where the name interim_ comes from, and it definitely drives our ideas to have the space transform with each show, and long term to also move between multiple locations once our time in this one is up. And the underscore (_) in our name and logo gives space for interim_ to take on these multiple identities, locations, and types of projects.
Tell me more about the space itself
The structure that we now inhabit used to house the office of an old TV news channel. The space itself was quite a challenge to take on in that it was left abandoned 10 or so years ago, and so we found it completely dilapidated. One thing that we consciously decided was to leave the existing facade the way it was, barring minor restoration that was required safety-wise. So after stripping the structure of it’s false walls and ceilings, we were left with a roughly finished space but also one that still revealed a bit of its history. We left some things completely untouched too, like the studio where the broadcasting took place. We intend to use it almost as a “media room” to showcase performances, live streams or media related work, nodding to its history a bit.
You opened your space to the public just last month, with a debut show Content, by Tara Kelton.
What drew us to Tara’s work and putting up this show was also a desire to present non-traditional work. We also tried to exhibit it in a non-traditional way, allowing people to pick things off the shelf, making room to sit and have conversation, and in general trying to create a casual/comfortable environment in the space.
One thing I noticed is that you’ve been putting out mixtapes for a while. Tell me about the playlists.
The playlists come from a mutual interest in music. To be honest, the first thing was that we had the place and wanted people to know a little bit about what we were doing. Putting out playlists really came from the limbo of the physical space and waiting on the restoration of the space or programming which was getting delayed with the situation, monsoon, and other obstacles. Playlists were a way to keep content going but we realised it was also a community sort of thing — listening to music.
When we were ideating, we thought of listening rooms so music was always a part of our plan. We didn’t want our space to be perceived as just visual art but keep it broader in the sense of music, food, fashion, every creative practise there is. Something that really excited us about the space was showcasing live music there. Initially what pushed us to put the playlists out was this feeling that okay we can’t have live music yet, why don’t we curate mixtapes or playlists and occupy a virtual space in this in-between time. A way to have consistent monthly thing when our space isn’t as consistent.
Personally it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I do make playlists for fun so I always thought I’d curate a page or platform where I’d do that. Having interim allows us to put out ideas under the same title or project which is a cool thing.
We have also been able to connect with people on music. If I ask a friend ‘do you want to make the next playlist?’, there’s so much excitement at the other end. People really do get happy to share the music they’re listening to with other people. It’s been a way to bring in friends that we have from Bombay and all over the world, their perspectives come out through the themes we put to it, it tells you a lot about the people. It also goes with Tara’s show, a thing of archives.
What do you have in mind for future programming?
We have some shows lined up, which again is an effort to change the perception of what art in a gallery can be. Our next show is with a street artist — we’re particularly excited to work on and see how the space and set up changes with each show, kind of like each having their own interim life in the space. Another show we have lined up includes a site specific installation that will respond to the architecture of our space — also something we are very interested in facilitating. We’re also not just restricting ourselves to one type of art.
In addition to this we’re hoping to organise a residency where selected artists use the space as their studio for a short duration, and people can visit the space and see work in progress during open studios, as well as the culmination in a final show. We’re not planning too much in the future, we’re trying to do as much as we can but also at our own pace as we’re definitely still learning through the process. Also putting out here that we give the space out on rent occasionally, for other organisations or independent makers to use as they please, and this is something that really helps sustain the space and programming.
Visit Interim online here, and listen to their playlists on Spotify at interim_plays.
Visit the artists websites at Tara Kelton, Yaazd Contractor and Simran Ankolkar.