Exhibition Preview: Ruth Marten – A Treasure Hunt in a Lazar House, Pure and Applied, London, until January 19 2013

Ruth Marten’s boundlessly expansive takes on collaging occasionally depict leprous figures, so the position of this gallery – within yards of leper hospice sites from the 13th century – is a fitting one.

Pure and Applied, as a vintage print gallery, also affords the perfect cavern in which Marten can hide her intricate drawings, giving women kettleheads and gently lampooning early 20th century surrealist Max Ernst’s Histoire Naturelle with a monograph.

Organised by Isis Gallery, her display has already been compared at once to the cabinets of curiosities, satirical cartoons and absurd travelling exhibitions which followed each other in successive centuries from the 1600s onwards.

But across the rest of these spun out narratives, cast in pen and ink in prints from those bygone centuries found in the flea markets of New York, this treasure hunt promises some strange and beautiful discoveries courtesy of Marten’s time-hopping re-imaginings.

• Pure and Applied, Bermondsey Street, London. Open Monday-Friday 10.30am-5.30pm (11am-4pm, closed December 22 – January 1). Follow Isis Gallery on Twitter @IsisGalleryUK.

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