Marc Werner enters the mazes created by the master-builder

of reality, Mike Nelson, and leaves in a daze

Eiii' ' I ...
i ...
amera-shy and retiring, Mike
Nelson tells us everything we
Cneed to know about his art in the
work itself.We Iknow that Nelson
is a veteran of more than a dozen
solo exhibitions and twice as many group shows,
but this knowledge in itself adds nothing to our
understandinig of his status as a sculptor and
instalfationist. Prior to his last major solo
exuibition - The Ielivetance and the Patience, in a
disused brewery on the Giudecca in the 2001
Venice Bieinnale - Nelson had found himself
included on the shortlist for this year's 'l'urner
Prizc. This speaks volumes.
Thle very scale of Nelson's individual works
puts one in mind of a builder. In rnore than one
sense, he has been buildling from the beginning.
More than buildinig a career, wlich would be too
cynical an interpretation for an artist as commit-
ted to a personal vision as Nelson clearly is, he
has been building a narrative are. Fiction forms
the foundation for much of his work, as we will
see, btit the very act of building lies
at the heart of it, too. Planning Application
(Babylon) at the Agency in L.ondon in 1993, was
itust that: an application to turn a flat in Curtain
Road, EC2, into Nebuchadnezzar's palace, five
courtyards and hanging gardens. The I.ondon
Borouglh of 1I ackney may not have granted per-
mission for the recreation of Babylon in
Shorcditch, but building work soon began on
other Nelson projects. For San Andreas Fault in
1994, his wood cabin on stilts cosied up against
the gallery's elaborate ceiling plasterwork. He
began to incorporate elements of existing archi-
tecture into ttie work: his tent-on-a-raft, I&yVlor, at
thleView in Fliverpool in 1994, was anchored to a
cast-iron column by being built around it. The
wooden struts of Barker Ranch (1 996) seemed
chosen to intermingle with the exposed beams of
Above: "T1 Corai Reef", Mat's Gailen 2000. OpposRle page: "Master of Reality", 1997
the W139 gallery in Amsterdam as much as to
evoke the rickety reality of Lennon &
McCartney's "IHlter Skelter".
At this mid-stage of Nelson's developmenit,
there is a near-auttistic quality to his obsession
with assembling structures out of wood. It's as if
each separate work, every individual show, is
another board nailed on top of the one before,
all part of ani ongoing project, an claborate
tower - but leading where? The gallery spaces
have ceilings, unlike Nelson's inagination and
ambition. So, when they carn, in fact, climb no
higher, he changes tack. Abandoning the tower
as his central motif, he begins to rely more heav-
ily on the idea - indeed, the concrete (or wood-
en) reality - of the maze or labyrinth.
One-man shows in Bucharest and Bremnen in
1996-97 found his stuff scattered around the
gallery. Nelson would turn up, his pick-up truck
stuffed with art - vague, stiggestive humps
undaer tarpaulin - and unload it over the gallery
floor. It was later in 1997 that he started order-
ing his materials within a rigid framework.
The Anitnesiacs (1997), at Campbells
Occasionally in Copenhagen, with its series of
ground-level rooms constructed out of wood
and chicken wire, was a key show in the evolu-
tion of Nelson's work. It also introduced, more
strongly than before, the role of narrative: sets of
characters, unseen but imagined from their
abandoned props, and locations that seenied to
resound with the psychic echo of their recent
departure. 'I'he Amnnesiacs themselves werc a
mysterious biker gang, who left their motorcycle
helmets lying about as if they had forgotten
them. Nelson himself is photographed in a
denim jacket, the word "Amncsiacs" emblazoned
across the back in the manner of a member of a
biker gang. 'I'he same themnes and methods were
evident in Master oc Reality (1997) at Berwick
Gvymnasiurm Gallery. 'l'he title worked in two
ways: by gathering part of his material for the
show from nearby beaches in the foirm of drift-
wood and other flotsam and jetsam, Nelson was
proving himself a master of the reality aroUTId
him, but he was also demonstrating a greater
confidence with regard to the creation of his
own invented reality, his mythology.
Nelson's interest in fiction is clear from his
repeated refercnces to Borges, Jules Verne,
B-movies and science fiction. A t999 work at
Edinburgh's Collective Gallery, 0
' 6 ARTREVSEW
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To the Memory of I1P Loveeraft, took part
Borges short story as its titde, but the
itself, featuring wholesale, vicious, cla
destruction of the gallery walls, appears 1
represent any number of Lovecraft horror
with The Rats in the Wizlls nudged uneasi
the front of the viewer's mind.
It was in Toudist Hotel (1999) at the Do
Hyde (Gallery in Dublin that Nelson fu
developed his ovn fictional world. The ei
hotel reception desk, with its rack of keys
map of the world in Arabic, prefigures T7he e
Reef, as do the rumpled sleeping bags ir
hotel's cell-like rooms. 7'he Coral Reef (200(
Matt's Gallery, was in so many ways the ap'
osis of Nelson's project to date that it was ha
imagine how he might ever create somei
more powerful and pleasurable. Transfori
the gallery into a maze of xvaiting rooms
ante-chambers, car workshops, druggie sq
minicab offices and hotel lobbies, he creat
space in which the viewer's imagination
stimulated almost to excess, so that one stun
from room to room punchi-drunk with e)
ment. The fictional possibilites were enc
each space suggesting a narrative with nume
different interpretations. By creating a dc
room at the end, Nelson ensured that the vie'
experience would conclude with a visceral s
that was also psychologically profound. In b
of messing witha your inld it was a masterp
The Venice installation, similarly labyrintl
wowed critics and others to the extent tb
somewhat overshadowed the official Bi
presence. For the ICA show, it was pron
that Nelson would transform the ci
building. Wle should expect no less, and, illC
a great deal more. It is to be hoped that
Turner Prize nomination, while richly desei
will not distract attention from the compl
of the work itself. Y
Mike Nelson, "Nothing Is 'IlTe. Everythit
Permniitted", to II Nor,, ICA. London (020 7930 J
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wing
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'647j
Neal Brown meets Craig Fisher, who plays with puppets,
PVC and ambiguous positions. Portrait: Richard Kelly
raig Fisher is clear about his work. "It's
hard for people to step outside their
C assumptions," he says. "I like playing
with their assumptions - about what I'm allowed
to be as a man and an artist, and how my mas-
culinity is defined." And it's true his work is hard
to get a fix on. Sewn from brightly coloured fab-
rics, Fisher creates sculptural forms that look
like clothing, and comprise ambiguous refer-
ences to fashion, gender stereotypes and high
and low art that make for a potent mix. Made
from materials such as corduroy, satin, PVC,
Airtex or leather, and either freestanding or wall
hung, the works are camp and clever, and have
gained Fisher, who is an ex-Goldsmiths student,
a Saatchi fellow bursary.
I-is pieces look like they're supposed to be
worn - but, as this manrifestly cannot happen, the
effect is of a strident non-functionalism. Looking
like depleted puppet or cartoon characters,
Fisher's garments are often strangely conjoined,
designed to be shared by two people of very dif-
ferent sizes and which, if they were worn,
would bring tlem into a very strange intinmacy.
Employing a camp iconography of nmale utni-
forms (spaccmen, soldiers, sports heroes)
Fisher brings these into conflict with the effete
pinks and soft satin interiors of the garments.
It's a bit porny, and a bit corny, and places
Fisher somewhere with the artist Iladrian Pigott
at one end, and Sooty and Sweep at the other.
'What's important is positioning myself within
determined boundaries," Fisher says, "the works
operating as both an image and an object, craft
and fashion and art, furniture and sculpture, gay
and straight, happy and sad." Unlike some othler
58 ARThEViEW
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: Mike Nelson
SOURCE: Art Review (London, England) 52 {i.e. 53} O 2001
WN: 0127404391032
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