Nelson, M. (2019). Mike Nelson | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts. [online] Royalacademy.org.uk. Available at: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/mike-nelson-ra [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Mike Nelson
He was born in Loughborough 1967, United Kingdom and he lives and works in London.
He studied at Reading University, BA (Hons) Fine Art -first class from 1986 to 1990, Then He studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design, MA Sculpture in 1992 and finished in 1993
Exhibition
- 1994, “Charity Shop”, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, United Kingdom
- 1995, “Agent Dickson at Red Star Hotel”, Hales Gallery, London, United Kingdom
- 1996, “TRADING STATION ALPHA Cma”, Matt’s Gallery, London, United Kingdom and “No can Teach A Dog Old Tricks New” Academia De Arta, Bucharest, Romania.
- 2000, “The Coral Reef at Matt’s Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
- 2005 “Spanning Fort Road and Mansion Street-between a formula and a code” commissioned by Turner contemporary, Margate, United Kingdom; “The Unforgiven/ Gil Spietati” at Galleria RomaRomaRoma, Roma, Italy; “Agent Dickson at the Red Star Hotel” curated by Cristiana Perrella, The British School at Roma, Roma, Italy; “Studio apparatus for Mamco” Mamco-musee d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland.
- 2010, “Quiver of Arrow”303 Gallery, New York, NY. And “The Coral Reef” in Tate Britain, London, UK.
- 2013, “Mike Nelson” at Contemporary Art, Vancouver, Canada; “More things (To the memory of Honore de Balzac)” Matt’s Gallery, London and “M6” at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
- 2016, “Amnesiac Shirine or the misplacement…, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; “Clock” at Nouveau Musee National de Monaco, Monaco; “Sensory Spaces 8” at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. “Imperfect Geometry for a Concrete Quarry” at Kalkbrottet, Limhamn, Malmo and “Tools That See” Neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Germany.
- 2018 “L’Atteso”, Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, Italy and “Lionheart”, the New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, England.
- 2019 “PROJEKTOR (Gurun Han)” Protocinema, Istanbul, Turkey and Tate Britain “Commission” Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom.
Mike became famous in the late 1990s from sifting through the pieces of modern life. He creates huge environmental sculpture that exist in certain plays by planning and creating the art piece in the location that they normally appear from period living and working in that location. His installation mostly create assemblages that involve cultural wastes which spread throughout other territory. His theme is a mixture of literary, filmic, socio-political, cultural and Failed political movements that make it a carefully arrange tableau (and Motionless things representing scenes from history) He wanted his viewer to spend time habituating a world which was foreign looking on the surface, showing the important truth and method of belief that affects even the most basic cultural activities.
Mike Nelson had a conversation with Clarrie Wallis and Elsa Coustou.
They asked him about The Asset Strippers that has a similar Relationship to his other work the Lionheart in 1997.
Mike said that the Lionheart work has quite a strong relationship to the Asset Strippers and it was made at a crucial moment in British history. For example, the end of Conservative rule and the birth of the new Labour, plus it was same time of the death of Princess Diana and the crisis of Royalty in the face of an ever-increasing Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. The work lionheart is named after the first imperialist king of England who was the first ruler to focus on distant exploits, but he failed to look after his subject at home. This work was original made for the Galerie Im Kunstlerhaus, Bremen, in Northern Germany and the material he found was from markets and car boot sales to create an imaginary drifters camp with care and thought using readymade material. When he was in one of the markets at Bremen which was almost solely run by people from the former Eastern Bloc. He found his materials from overfilled vans that had Old Medals, Soviet Militaria, Strange animal skins and archaic technology proliferated in the cultural detritus. He said it felt like the old Eastern trade routes because their market are closed but then reopen after the Communism collapsed, Also some of this was heading toward Britain, a country on the cusp of change. And at that time British markets were populated by the merging of an underclass that was mixing with the newcomers from Britain’s Colonial past. Looking through the remains of their own history. Like the Lionheart this work that’s a cross between an Empire of the past and an ever expanding Europe. Asset Strippers is mostly about Britain at a certain point in time, but Mike does not want to create work that was mostly about the current political situation, but he can’t help but reflect on it to some level.
The M6 at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, United Kingdom (2013) is Mike first major exhibition in his home region nelson also had another major exhibition like Venice Biennale (2001), Istanbul Biennial (2003) and Sao Paulo Biennial (2004).
Mike Nelson: The Asset Strippers (2019) Exhibition, Tate Britain, London 18 March – 6 October 2019.
The Asset Strippers
Made in 2019
Found material like old machines, telegraph poles, and a section of concrete tube, caterpillar wheel, wood, a duvet, a cover sheet and an engine. He found all these material after he scoured online auctions of company liquidators, so he carefully chose these post-war British objects.
The Duveens galleries which caught his interest, where he learned that it was the first public gallery in England that was designed specifically for displaying sculpture. Where he can imagine the gallery litter with the leftover of a past world. His idea was to focus on the post-war era of his parents and his childhood life in Britain halfway through of the 20th century. He had first in mind to focus on the huge knitting machine worked on by his father along with his grandfather and at the start his mother, where they work in the textile factories in the East Midland witnessing the industry’s sometimes brutal death through the1970s and the 80s. The element of this era failure along with the aspirations of social forward looking vision form the core of his frame of reference, as it was the world he was born into and one that he expected to continue in a direct course as before. The vision of post-war British its welfare state and its challenges at social parity seem long gone.
He focuses on the manufacturing industry which seemed to point that he could access though industry material through the era and that been replaced by digital technology. This could explain why he was using the online auctions of asset strippers and company liquidators to collect the objects.
The title has a direct relationship to the process that he had gone through to make it work and he was afraid that the process could have gone unnoticed if it were a suggested somehow. The title is also about a narrative possibly like a Harold Pinter play in the Caretaker or the Birthday Party, for example, a kitchen sink drama or piece of social realism tinged with the ridiculous.
Mike, turned the heart of Tate British into somewhere between a sculpture court and an asset stripper’s warehouse.
This work was influenced by the Duveen Galleries’ origins in1937 as the first purpose-built sculpture galleries in England and turning them into a warehouse of a monument to a lost era, historically brief and unrealistic moment in time somehow seems strangely fitting.
My reference
I think this work is about abandoned factories where the machines no longer have a use or purpose any more. However, all the machines and other parts are stuck up like sculpture as if someone was leaving their trade mark behind, where they try to create their own history. The reason I thought that was because I saw this concrete tube stacked up on three logs of telephone poles with the cover sheet of a truck and an engine place on top of a pile of duvet covers as if someone had tried to create the story of their life.
The way they presented this work was very frightening because the whole room was dead silent as an eerie wind blew by and every time the door opened it creaked. What made this work interesting is he spreads the work around as if they were from different areas, some of the first room is full of simple machinery then later on it is more like a storage space and then there is one with a huge door that separates to other work feel like a barricade as if the whole world is in the Apocalypse.
I think the reason why Mike use these found materials is to relate to the factory because each machine is very old and dusty to make you feel like nobody has been in since it closed and somehow somebody been messing around to make them into simple sculpture by stacking them on each other. Some small children will find this place terrifying because the room is large and as the door opens it will scare them making them feel like they are on the outside of reality where the truth can be very dark for them. Some people say that they can smell the oil from the machines but to me I cannot smell them but if I somehow was able to smell the oil this work will have a different story to tell me
The technique has to be assemblage because most of the work I saw was ready-made, so this method is very common for using objects that all ready-made.
What made this work powerful is the readymade material he used because the materials are very old-fashioned with rusty, dusty and filthy with oil stains make you look like people have not touched them for many years in the future which made them left forgotten. But what I like about these works is that each of the sculptures are very different from each other as if each one of them had a story or something that supposed to relate to the past.
What I found where this art piece did not work very well is the way they displayed it in a hall that did not seem old enough looking. The walls were to clean and the window looked undamaged, what I would do differently is move to a different room where all the walls are wood then start adding charcoal dust and dust onto the walls to make it look like they have not been touched and has some of the glass windows smashed with a hammer to make it look like nobody has replaced them. Add some bird or animals’ nests into the work to look like some animals are living in the factory. Which is signs that relate to people are also living in this as their new place of safety, using the building as a fortress.
NELSON, M. (2019). Le Cannibale (Parody, Consumption and Institutional Critique) – Mike Nelson – PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS – 303 Gallery. [online] 303gallery.com. Available at: https://www.303gallery.com/public-exhibitions/mike-nelson7 [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Le Cannibale (Parody, Consumption and Institutional critique) 2008
He used 41 wood and MDF Plinths, Mixed Media.
The title of this work in English is a word for cannibalized from the previous work, where Mike demolish part of the false wall of the Hayward Gallery in London with a hand axe for the 2008 psycho building exhibition.
The eerie space he has created to have a stalled narrative. The Booker film he read normally fully supply jump off points for his fevered imagination and his best efforts have a dizzying quality of being lost in a mad mind. Mike wants to create a feeling of a giant creature clawing at the walls and his plinths Look like it had been attacked with a ghostly quality as if haunting minimalism.
This work may have been inspired by an unknowable and powerful quasi-fiction which is better experienced first-hand.
My reference
I think this work is about after the chaos like war, earthquake or tsunami but to me it looked like there was a huge serious fight with all those holes looking like someone had punched through or used a weapon to make a holes or scratched with their claws and it seemed like somebody was after the thing that was on the plinth like a rare item which remind me of black Friday where there was a huge fight with each other over like this super item that become cheaper than half price.
All the plinths as he presented them are very spread across the room to make it feel like we are in a normal gallery except all the plinths are damaged but where I find this work Fascinated is the way he displays his artwork even though the plinths are damaged they are displayed very neatly as if nothing really happened. This work doesn’t seem bigger than The Asset Strippers in the Tate because that place used the whole room and the ceiling was higher than this one.
I think the reason why he used wood with white paint on, which all those plinths are made of, wood can be used to store work on top of better than any other material. Also, wood is much lighter so they are very easy to move around for each month as they are at different exhibition. I bet most people would mistake this for a disaster that someone was too lazy to clean up. They had left it where is it look like as if they forgot to change it and nobody would ever believe these plinths are art pieces.
I think the method he used is woodwork construction but these damage mark seemed to be that Mike somehow hired someone to damage them for him or left them somewhere to get these work damaged, like in a rough place, where someone is willing to smash them or got damaged due to the weather.
What I love about this work is the destruction of these plinths with all the scratches and holes punched through and scratched paint marks is perfect for a dystopian theme and this artwork is completely different because nobody would ever think of using a plinth as an art piece which made me realise that every object can be art material as well.
Where I don’t find this work very powerful is these plinths are a bit blank because no one know what sort objects they displayed on these plinths which made this work feel more questioning. What I would do differently is buy some cheap pots and smashed them Scatter them around each plinth and to make this work look like it’s been the scene of a fight add some bit of red paint as blood and put some used bullets around each plinth
Image
Nelson, M. (2019). Mike Nelson | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts. [online] Royalacademy.org.uk. Available at: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/mike-nelson-ra [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
NELSON, M. (2019). Le Cannibale (Parody, Consumption and Institutional Critique) – Mike Nelson – PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS – 303 Gallery.
[online]
303gallery.com. Available at: https://www.303gallery.com/public-exhibitions/mike-nelson7 [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Mike Nelson: The Asset Strippers (2019) Exhibition, Tate Britain, London 18 March – 6 October 2019.
Information
GALLERY, 3. (2019). Mike Nelson | Artists | 303 Gallery.
[online]
303gallery.com. Available at: https://www.303gallery.com/artists/mike-nelson/biography [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Judah, H. (2019). Fire sale Britain: Mike Nelson on why he turned the Tate into a big salvage yard.
[online]
the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/18/mike-nelson-interview-tate-britain-asset-strippers-cement-mixer [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Museum, R. (2013). Summer 2013 | rennie museum. [online] Rennie Museum. Available at: https://renniemuseum.org/summer-2013/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Nelson, M. (2019). Mike Nelson Full Bio. [online] 303gallery.com. Available at: https://www.303gallery.com/attachment/en/5576fee507a72c0678771e53/TextOneColumnWithFile/57250cad59a837052df1140c [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
NELSON, M. (2019). Le Cannibale (Parody, Consumption and Institutional Critique) – Mike Nelson – PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS – 303 Gallery. [online] 303gallery.com. Available at: https://www.303gallery.com/public-exhibitions/mike-nelson7 [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Neslon, M. (n.d.). Matt’s Gallery. [online] Mattsgallery.org. Available at: https://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/nelson/exhibition-3.php [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Noero, F. (2019). Mike Nelson – Galleria Franco Noero. [online] Galleria Franco Noero. Available at: https://www.franconoero.com/artist/mike-nelson/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Aestheticamagazine.blogspot.com. (2011). Re-examined Territories: the British Council present Mike Nelson, Venice Biennale. [online] Available at: http://aestheticamagazine.blogspot.com/2011/06/re-examined-territories-british-council.html [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Sam, S. (2011). SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2011: Open House. [online] The Brooklyn Rail. Available at: https://brooklynrail.org/2011/06/artseen/singapore-biennale-2011-open-house [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
_People:Tan, S. (2011). Le Cannibale 2011, Mike Nelson : general view | PictureSG.
[online]
Eresources.nlb.gov.sg. Available at: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/pictures/details/f561607c-1688-4399-b7b0-648d4be33e51 [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Britain, T. and nelson, M. (2019). Tate Britain Commission: Mike Nelson: The Asset Strippers – Exhibition at Tate Britain | Tate. [online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/mike-nelson#:~:targetText=Mike%20Nelson%20has%20transformed%20the,and%20an%20asset%20strippers’%20warehouse.&targetText=It%20turns%20the%20neo-classical,vision%20of%20society%20it%20represented. [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Chang, C. (2015). Mike Nelson by Chris Chang – BOMB Magazine. [online] Bombmagazine.org. Available at: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/mike-nelson/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Nelson, M. (2013). Meet the artist: Mike Nelson. [online] Time Out London. Available at: https://www.timeout.com/london/art/meet-the-artist-mike-nelson [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Nelson, M. (2019). Mike Nelson. [online] Frieze.com. Available at: https://frieze.com/fair-programme/mike-nelson [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Nelson, M. (2019). Mike Nelson | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts. [online] Royalacademy.org.uk. Available at: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/mike-nelson-ra [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Nelson, M. (2019). Mike Nelson, M6. [online] Eastside Projects. Available at: https://eastsideprojects.org/projects/mike-nelson-m6/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
NELSON, M. (2008). Le Cannibale (Parody, Consumption and Institutional Critique). [online] Paris-art.com. Available at: https://www.paris-art.com/le-cannibale-parody-consumption-and-institutional-critique/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2019].
Mike Nelson: The Asset Strippers (2019) Exhibition, Tate Britain, London 18 March – 6 October 2019.
Fraser Thing 