Long Corridor at Shunt lounge

Members of the collective take turns to curate. This offering is the brainchild of Serena Bobowski, a former ballerina and one of Shunt's original founders. Bringing together films, plays, structures and paintings from more than a dozen artists must have been hard work, but Serena seems unfazed. "It's such a joy to be hostess," she says, "and it turned out exactly how I hoped. The project is inspired by Allan Bond and his ideas for space and buildings, which allowed us to transform our space into human geography."

Bond himself seemed delighted to be there, fielding questions from inside his spacious Pantheon exhibit, an eight foot tall wooden hut that snows inside. "It's wonderful to be able to use the freedom and space on offer here. It gave me a chance to work on a large scale." While Bond confesses to minimal knowledge of the original Pantheon, the piece carries a special and poignant meaning to him. "This is built out of scraps that I've salvaged from around Hackney. It represents my fears that modernisation has made it (Hackney) far too image conscious, so that we have lost some of our identity and become like a tourist trap".

 Persona by Ruth Stringer

Befitting a collection that involved little or no collusion between artists, given a "free rein" to interpret as they pleased, a common thread was not immediately detectable. Installations ranged from giant bridges to the frankly baffling videos of spinning vortexes set to a soundtrack of moans.

The Black Piece by Johan Bjorgvinsson

There is much to engage the casual visitor as well as the devotee. Exhibits can be walked on, tweaked and acted in - all in a casual, accommodating manner. "Everything is still a work in progress that can be developed", Serena explains. Anna Frisch, co-creator of Spissitude, says that her performance piece cannot be completed until participants' help her to fine tune it. Such flexibility has led to suggestions of poor organisation, but many will find it charming. Spaces within Spaces works because it lives by its own unruly structure and delivers enough scale and variety to suit the cavernous venue. Plus, if nothing grabs you, there's a giant bar with pinball machines.

Spissitude by Anna Frisch, written by Rishi Trikha

Photography by Inigo Alcaniz

Spaces within Spaces is on display at Shunt until 2 May.