After investing more than £8.9m in the renovation and extension of its gallery space in London, The Photographers' Gallery has said that it'll be ready to welcome new visitors from 19 May.

The news comes after the gallery faced multiple delays since it closed in September 2010. While initial plans announced a late-2011 reopening, the gallery was forced to delay the unveiling of its new space, which will include three dedicated galleries, an education floor and an "enhanced Print Sales, Bookshop and Café", to early 2012.

The Gallery now says that visitors will have to wait until May to discover the new space, which has been designed by Irish architects O'Donnell + Tuomey. "Providing a platform for an enhanced programme of exhibitions, the generously proportioned galleries will showcase established and emerging photographic talent from the UK and around the world," says the gallery in a statement. "A new environmentally-controlled floor will create opportunities to show more work from archives and museum collections and higher ceilings in the top floor galleries will provide dynamic spaces for large-scale and moving image works."

The gallery's inaugural exhibition programme will include Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky who will showcase more than thirty large-scale images from his Oil series.

The Photographers' Gallery will also show a display by Raqs Media Collective, which includes a silent, looped video projection titled An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale (2011). "The projection features a series of subtle alterations to an early 20th century photograph depicting a surveyors' room in colonial Calcutta," says the Gallery. "Also included in the exhibition will be a sculptural work entitled 36 Planes of Emotion (2011) that features an ensemble of emotional states printed onto book-shaped objects."

For more details, visit www.photonet.org.uk.

Highway #1, Intersection 105 & 110, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2003 © Edward Burtynsky, Courtesy Nicholas Metivier, Toronto / Flowers, London.