London’s first nonprofit space and foundation devoted to contemporary art from Russia and Eastern Europe, Calvert22 launched last May with an exhibition program ambitious enough to compete with Europe’s finest Kunsthallen. The project’s founder, the St. Petersburg-born collector and financial consultant Nonna Materkova, has invited British artists and curators to mount three shows a year in the nonprofit’s 5,500-square-foot converted warehouse in the city’s Shoreditch area. For "Reimagining October," which runs October 2 to December 6, the London-based multimedia artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien and the curator and Royal College of Art professor Mark Nash have brought together 12 video artists whose work addresses the lingering impact of the former Soviet Union. In the 12-minute video Exodus, 2009, Almagul Menlibayeva films a story of cultural displacement centering on a young girl watching her nomadic family pack up their tents in the artist’s native Kazakhstan.

"East London Looks East" originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2009 Table of Contents.