FOCUS LONDON

84 FlashArt OCTOBER 2000

MIKE NELSON
Mike Nelson
LEVERAGE OF SPACE
Michele Robecchi
MICHELE ROBECCHI: Your installations are
verv intense but never too busy They seem to
preserve a minimal quality
Mike Nelson: I've always had a slight fear of
piles of junk that function purely as decora-
tive ephemera but only act as a signifier of a
certain type of installation. It was a particu-
lar concern with an early work; Trading Sta-
tion Alpha CMa (1996) at Matt's Gallery. It
was built to look like a storeroom, with big
shelving structures filled with the varied de-
tritus from the streets of the East End that
proliferated in the streets and waste ground
before the property boom. At the center of
the structure was a hut built into the shelv-
ing itself. Here was the lair of a creature; half
dog half man, seemingly the dumbest idea
for a gallery which was originally named af-
ter a dog. However at this point the formal
stacks of junk were animated by this fictional
character, and you as the viewer were asked
to re-read the work from the inside out, back
to front as it were. A book, Hard to Be A
God, the dog's reading matter, was a pivotal
clue to the two references in the show and
its thematic drive: the moment when Den-
nis Hopper's crazed paparazzi photographer
observes the reversal of the word "god" to
"dog" connects the authors of the book; the
Strugatsky brothers to the film Apocalypse
Now.
So, in a sense the whole work was about that
space between a film and its literary refer-
ence -Apocalypse Now and Heart of Dark-
ness, Stalker and Roadside Picnic. You had
this American-Soviet comparison running
through it, both versions of the same tale.
When I was working on that I was very aware
that it could be criticized, in the sense of "Oh
my God, look at this. There's so much effort,
but what does it mean?"
MR: Ate you concerned when you work that
you might slip into this theatrical trap?
MN: I think it's a constant worry that you'll
make this amount of effort to have some-
thing that just becomes spectacle, as opposed
to something which moves somebody or en-
courages somebody to empathize with what
you're trying to lure them into, or coax them
towards. But you can't really lay a hard and
fast rule. You can't control that. You can try,
but that becomes problematic in itself. Say a
piece like A Psychic Vacuum (2007). I never
saw it after I'd finished it, except while taking
photographs. I would never go into it when
there were people in it. There is a worry in
the art world now with its increased visibil-
ity, that such spectacles could become a tool
of the politicians or multi nationals or at any
rate removed from the intent that they were
made for.
MR: Your work presents tight relationships
with the surrounding architecture and its his-
toty When it comes to a group show, like the
recent "Psycho Building" at the Hayward,
where you rebuilt To the Memory of H.Y
Lovecraft (1999), do you think this effect be-
comes diluted?
MN: The work at the Hayward gallery is dif-
ferent, because I built it before everything
else was installed. I think that work would be
far better if the rest of the museum was emp-
ty and there was just one room that had been
ripped apart. But I don't think the Hayward
would be that amenable to that! The archi-
tecture there is very brutal and that is why I
chose to re-work it for there, I was pleased
the way it turned out. People can't really tell
all that I've done because the big central
archway wall in the center is all fake, we built
it as a double-skinned wall to emulate the
rest of the building with a plaster wall behind
with hardboard skirtings and grills put in so it
appears that it has always been there.
Also in relation to the question, there was
another work I made for my MA show at
Chelsea College of Art in 1993, which I re-
built for a show at GAMeC in Bergamo a
couple of years ago. It was titled A staging
of the reconstruction of the southern palace of
Babylon which in effect was what it was. In
terms of context, time or history is a major
factor in the reading of a piece, and in rela-
tion to this, recent world events have been
To the Memory of H.P. Lovecraft (1999), 2008. Installation
view at The Hayward Gallery. London.
Courtesy Mt's Gallery, London: Galleria Franco Noero,hTrin,
Photo: Stephen Whitc.
OCTOBER 2008 FlashArt 85
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FOCUS LONDON
kind to that work, if not to the rest of the
world or the Iraqi people.
MR. It's interesting how something conceived
in the early '90s turned out to be so time-sensi-
tive again 12 years later:
MN: Yeah, but not in the same way though.
The first Gulf War was perceived in a far dif-
ferent way to the second one. Predominantly
people were supportive of it, it was seen as a
success. The work now is shifting away from
such didactic political territory. It's becoming
more self-conscious of its own theatricality
than earlier work. I think this has arisen since
returning to work in galleries and museums
after a period of predominantly building
works into found, exiting spaces: a deserted
reptile house in the Kings Cross region in the
Sydney Biennial of 2002 or the hidden pho-
tographic darkroom in an old caravansary for
the 2003 Istanbul Biennial, or more recently
in the old Essex St. Market for Creative Time
in New York (2007).
MR: Does the piece you are currently working
on in Copenhagen fall into this latter category?
MN: I think so. I am making it immediately
apparent that it's an artifice. The building will
be a theater, so the reference to theatricality
is overt. It's two small theaters in the round,
which is very much in relation to what you
were talking about - the spectacle. There's
a section within the museum where the archi-
tecture is very repetitive. It's punctuated by
two rooms with lift shafts in them. Two rooms
exactly the same, connected by one long rect-
angular one in the middle. The structure I'm
building is then flipped onto the other side
and mirrored with a big curved 120-foot-long
corridor in the middle. In a sense you see the
back of a structure, the falsity of what you're
walking into, almost like you've come to the
back of a show when you shouldn't have
done. Initially you're feeling kind of pleased
Below, from left: Trading Station Alpha CMa 1996. Installation
view at Matt's Gallery: Mirror Infill, 2006. Mixed media, dineon-
sions variable. Commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects,
Frieze Art Fair. 2006, Photo: Polly Braden: Spanning Fort Road and
Mansion Street -Between a formola and a code, 2005. installation
view at Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK.
All images, courtesy Matt's Gallery. London: Galleria Franco
Wore. Turin.
Amnesiac Shtine or The Misplacement (a fituriolgical fable)'
nlirrored cubes - inverted - with the reflection of al inner
psyche as represented by a metaphorical landscape, 2007.
Mixed mrdia. Installation view at Tate Liverpool. Photo: David
Lambert & Rod Tidnam. Courtesy Matt's Gallery, London: Gal
leria Franco Neero, Turin.
with yourself because you spoiled the artist's
trick. This however is a double bluff of sorts
as it relaxes you for the main feature which
is your passage through the curved corridor
back to the same space where everything is
reversed. It looks kind of the same but you
know it's not, so there's an uncanniness, an
unease about it. It's like an investigation of
your own recent history, a device to reinvent
that sense of deja-vu the first time you ever
experienced it as a child, an existential mo-
ment of confusion.
MR% Do you think there is an analogy between
this sense of mirroring and the one you feel on
a personal level when you are rebuilding an old
piece?
MN: Obviously that metaphorical mileage
can be used in terms of the idea of mirroring.
Looking back at something and you can see
where you were but you can't quite acknowl-
edge it as it was.
Years ago I was very moved by personal ex-
perience of traveling. I was brought up in
the middle of England and I had only ever
visited France on an exchange program un-
til I turned 19 and found myself traveling to
the East of Turkey, the borders of Iran and
I had a life changing experience. I got super
ill, lost my passport, lost my money. From
that year on and for many years I traveled to
the Middle East; to Egypt, Morocco, Syria or
Pakistan. I became quite obsessed with the
Islamic world and the shift in emphasis of
its value structures from the world in which I
had been brought up. On a simplistic level it
seemed to offer the antithesis of what I was
familiar with in the West.
MR: It's a complicated territory.
MN: Yeah. And to drop in a few prayer mats
and a few stickers on a wall in this context
seems kind of flat and opportunistic. Origi-
nally my relationship to the Middle East was
one of a subjective history merging with that
of the world, there was an awkwardness in
my British identity in relation to it, an exoti-
cism of sorts. However times have changed
and there's much more visual currency to
such gestures and it's this exchange of value
that makes me wary of them when making
new work. But as I'm getting older I'm hop-
ing that people can do that work themselves
slightly more. Perhaps the idea of the mirror
in itself - the same thing again but slightly
off-kilter, is enough to talk about the times
we live in, as opposed to sexing it up with
other people's misfortune. So the work tends
to be going towards that. E
Michele Robecchi is a writer and an editor at Phaidon
Press in London.
Mike Nelson was born in Loughborough, UK, in 1967. He
lives and works in London.
Selected solo shows: 2008: Statens Museun for Kunst, Co-
penhagen. 2007: Creative Time, New York. 2006: Matt's
Gallery, London. 2005: Turner Contemporary, Margate,
UK; The British School at Rome; MAMCO, Geneva. 2004:
Modern Arl Oxford. 2001: ICA, London.
Selected group shows: 2008: "Eclipse - Art in a Dark Age,"
Modema Museet, Stockholm; "Psycho Buildings," Hay-
ward Gallery. London; "Martian Museum of Terrestrial
Art." Barbican, London: "tiPnt the Legend," Fmitinarket
Gallery, Edinburgh. 2007: Turner Prize, Tate Liverpool;
"Breaking Step," Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.
2006.- "Multiplication," MAC, Santiago. 2005: "No Mani-
]csto," GAMeC, Boegamo, Italy. 2004: 26th Bienal de Sao
Paolo; "Strange Weather-" Modern Art, London; "Into My
World, " Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, USA. 2003:
"Poetic Justice, "8th Intemational Istanbul Biennal; "Microl
Macro, "Mucsarnok, Budapest. 2002: Biennale of Sydney
86 nashArt OCTOBER 2008
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SOURCE: Flash Art 41 O 2008
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