Founded in 1975, the IMA is the oldest contemporary art space of its kind in Australia. Our mission is to promote experimentation and research by diverse Australian and international artists and share their work with wide audiences through four interconnected streams: production, presentation, participation, and publishing. Our activities embed the international in the local Queensland context and engage the local internationally. To realise our mission, the IMA has concentrates on commissioning new works by Australian and international artists at pivotal points of their practices and exhibiting these works in solo and group exhibitions.

The IMA is a registered charity and membership organisation supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments, and many private sponsors and donors. The IMA is a founding member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia. 

The IMA has a longstanding commitment to research and a rich history of publishing critical readers, exhibition catalogues, and artist monographs. We publish between three and five volumes a year, most of them in tandem with our exhibition program. Recent publications has been co-published with Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Power Institute, The University of Sydney; and Sternberg Press, Berlin.

Between 2007 and 2013, the IMA co-published the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, together with the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Australasia’s professional organisation for art historians.