Pirate Aggro:Mike Nelson @ the Hayward Gallery.

"My intent has always been to make immersive works. They should have a narrative, a spatial aspect, but also a psychological effect on the senses:you're seeing and feeling one thing whilst your brain is trying to override this and tell you something else" - Mike Nelson

(THE WOODSHED) (2004)

As you enter one of the installations at Mike Nelson's Extinction Beckons exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, an invigilator asks you to imagine you have stumbled on to an abandoned submarine or boat. So it seemed quite appropriate that I had a gouty knee (two gouty knees in fact) and was limping round it like a pirate. 

I almost looked like part of the show. But was the show any good? That, I'm not sure. It looked impressive, a lot of work had gone into it but it was overpriced for what it was, you could zip round it very quickly - even with bad knees, and some of Nelson's explanations for his art were at best disingenuous, at worst overly pretentious.

Nelson's schtick, throughout his career, has been to scavenge materials from reclamation yards, charity shops, and car boot sales and then build large installations that are intended to transform the way we think about both art and life. There's three decades worth of rubbish, sorry - reclaimed material, on display at the Hayward and, put together, they're intended to suggest the possibility of violence, the possibility of disaster, and the possibility of societal decay.

Though if you wanted to see disaster and societal decay the Conservative Party Conference is being held in Manchester in October. Ho ho! The exhibition, or should that be experience?, begins with 2011's I, IMPOSTOR (capitals and spelling mistakes, the artist's own). Bathed in a rather impressive red light, I, IMPOSTOR makes you feel like you've accidentally entered a large storage space. 

Shelves loaded up with cardboard boxes, pieces of wood, and wrought iron gates. None of which serves any purpose these days. We are, I assume, supposed to ponder these objects previous lives and mourn their descent into unemployment and worthlessness. Perhaps we are to consider how these objects are, in some ways, just like us. We too, one day, will serve no purpose. Our bodies will still exist until they rot away but our function will be no more. Hopefully we won't be displayed in art galleries by either a future version of Mike Nelson or, more worrying still, Gunther von Hagens.

I, IMPOSTOR (2011)

I, IMPOSTOR (2011)

I, IMPOSTOR (2011)

Once you've passed through the storage space you enter the gallery proper and the largest installation of the entire show, the abandoned ship one. It's called The Deliverance and the Patience and it's a labyrinth of interconnected rooms and corridors. You're not allowed to touch anything except the doors which, of course, you have to touch if you want to explore The Deliverance and The Patience.

It's not such a maze that you could seriously get lost in it but you do, at times, find yourself going down dead ends and doubling back on yourself. Inside the mocked up vessel I discovered a bar, a travel agent's office, a viewing platform, a rather grim looking mattress, skulls, and all manner of assorted paraphernalia. 

It's all supposed to convey a feeling of unease and discordant values and beliefs. An information board as you enter The Deliverance and the Patience talks about "a diverse society characterised by impermanence and ambiguity" and even gives a back story to the 'shipwreck'. Apparently, it happened in the 17th century and the survivors, many of them prisoners or indentured labourers, went on to attempt to create a free society in Bermuda before they were forced to build new ships and continue their journey onwards to Virginia.

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

The Deliverance and the Patience (2001)

Full marks to Nelson for concocting an interesting back story though it did feel like most of the visitors, myself included, weren't particularly feeling a sense of unease or discordant values but were, instead, quite enjoying exploring the wreckage and taking lots of photos. It's a good one for the Instagram, The Deliverance and the Patience.

Untitled (Public Sculpture for a Redundant Space) less so. Tucked away by the side of the stairs (and they were fun with gout, let me tell you) this piece is simply a sleeping bag filled with concrete and rubble. It's probably the most political and hard hitting piece in the whole show so it's a shame that many people would have either missed it entirely or rushed by it to see bigger, showier, installations.

London is notoriously awful at all times for low cost housing and it's getting worse rather than better. The Public Sculpture for a Redundant Space makes a quiet, but powerful, point about how our society, not just in London but in the whole country, cares far more about real estate development than it does about actual people, particularly homeless people. You wouldn't have to walk too far from the Hayward Gallery to find people living on the streets, often just metres away from unoccupied luxury flats.

Untitled (Public Sculpture for a Redundant Space) (2016)

It's a fucking disgrace. 2004's (THE WOODSHED) has a touch of politics about it too in the form of a Shell logo that you can see in a partially buried bucket. Shell have two large office blocks either side of the Thames near here and, let's be honest, multinational oil and gas companies are, at the time of a cost of living crisis - or as I prefer to think of it a distribution of wealth crisis, not very popular with most of the public.

Nelson doesn't make any overt, or explicit, points about that. That's my doing and he'd surely approve of that as it is often mentioned that he wishes those who experience his art to create their own narratives about it. (THE WOODSHED) is a mixture of Robert Smithson's land art and some kind of sci-fi apocalypse. There are strong hints, also, of the Middle East and the scarred deserts of the Iraq War.

Entropy is everywhere in Nelson's art. In the case of (THE WOODSHED) so is sand. Tyres too. Blown out tyres collected from the M25. Tyres that stand in for contemporary fossils. You can actually enter (THE WOODSHED) and, of course, I did. You follow a gently curving corridor into what appears to be a mocked up dark room with photos hanging up as if to dry. You then come out the other side of the sand and tyres and look at them from a different angle. I'm not sure entering (THE WOODSHED) really added much to the experience.

(THE WOODSHED) (2004)

(THE WOODSHED) (2004)

(THE WOODSHED) (2004)

(THE WOODSHED) (2004)

The next piece, tools that see (the possessions of a thief), is both bewildering and slightly charming. Nelson's exhibiting his own tools (no sniggering at the back) and asking the visitor to consider what the tools would have seen if they had the ability of sight and, presumably, thought. 

There's a nice shiny pile of nails and there's some kind of gripping device and it's not dissimilar, though on a smaller scale, to his Asset Strippers work which is also in display at the Hayward Gallery but which I've not written about here (though I have included some photos) because I wrote a blog all about that very piece when it was displayed in Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries back in 2019.

tools that see (the possession of a thief) (1986-2005)

tools that see (the possession of a thief) (1986-2005)

tools that see (the possession of a thief) (1986-2005)

The Asset Strippers (2019)

The Asset Strippers (2019)

The Asset Strippers (2019)

These pieces, like much of Nelson's work, serve as a visual elegy for the death of British industry. Nelson, you get the feeling, is not a man who would adapt well to working in a call centre. 2014's Studio Apparatus (and look below for its full title, something so long and unwieldy that even The Fall in their pomp would have rejected it as being ridiculous) is a 'cloud' of wire mesh full of bits of rock and crudely cast visages.

It takes nearly as long to read the title as it does to walk through the work but it's reasonably captivating as you do so. Apparently, it's all about the human desire to predict and control the future while acknowledging that artists, like the rest of us, can only live in the present. I'm not sure that was something I was thinking about as I limped around it. I was thinking "that's a nice colour cement mixer" and "those are quite cool masks". As well as "what the fuck is this all supposed to mean?".

Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Munster - A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception:Introduction;towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness;futurobjecs (misspelt);mysterious island**see introduction or Barothic shift (2014)

Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Munster - A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception:Introduction;towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness;futurobjecs (misspelt);mysterious island**see introduction or Barothic shift (2014)

Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Munster - A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception:Introduction;towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness;futurobjecs (misspelt);mysterious island**see introduction or Barothic shift (2014)

While my position on some of his art, and some of the motivations - or excuses, for his art may be a little ambivalent, I give Mike Nelson full marks for his inventive imagination. His ongoing work, The Amnesiacs, focuses on a biker gang that only exist in his mind. Well, our minds now too. A series of sculptures, including a Harley Davidson style motorbike, a leather jacket, and a balaclava, in a big wire cage. Are these bikers so feral they have to be caged like lions at a zoo?

The gang is said to be made up of PTSD suffering veterans of the Gulf War of 1990-91 so it's another time that Nelson is, obliquely admittedly, skewering both the UK and US governments of modern times for their lethal, and ill considered, imperial and colonial ventures.

The Amnesiacs (1996-ongoing)

The Amnesiacs (1996-ongoing)

The Amnesiacs (1996-ongoing)

Triple Bluff Canyon (the projection room) (2004)

Triple Bluff Canyon is a more personal, some may say indulgent, project. It's a full scale reconstruction of Nelson's studio and it's good to learn he's as messy in his studio as he is in the gallery. There's all sorts there:- books, furniture, masking tape, fans, paintings of chimps, masks, kettles, and stools.

Also, for some reason, projected out of the room is a 1993 video of a far right conspiracy theorist banging on, as they do, about the New World Order. In a way the conspiracy theorist has a link to Nelson in that he connects symbols, logos, and images to create connections and meanings. Nelson does it in a positive way, an open way. The right winger does it in a negative, self-serving, way. Conspiracy theorists motivation, often, seems to be to prove they're smarter than you. They almost certainly aren't.

I thought that was the end of the show, Nelson's signature at the bottom of the artwork in a sense, but as I left the gallery space there was one last piece. Amnesiac Beach Fire was the smallest piece in the entire show. A three dimensional image of a fire that provides no heat and provides no light. It'd be very cynical of me to say that that is highly typical of Nelson's work in that Nelson's work, also, provides no heat or no light.

Nelson's work does provide SOME heat and it does provide SOME light. I enjoyed walking, or limping, round it and I found much of it interesting. I just got the feeling it could have been even better, maybe had some deeper meaning I could get into. I wanted more heat and I wanted more light. I jumped on the 63 bus and went home.

Amnesiac Beach Fire (1997-ongoing)