LONDON (Reuters) – From an abandoned wooden structure in the desert to old tyres found on a motorway, an exhibition of installations made with scavenged materials by British artist Mike Nelson goes on show at London’s Hayward Gallery this week.
With its slightly ominous title “Extinction Beckons”, the exhibition takes visitors through immersive and sculptural works made with items Nelson has found or acquired in junk yards and shops, flea markets and auctions.
On show are new versions of some of Nelson’s works – for example disassembled doors, gates and furniture used for one of his installations now sitting on shelves – as well as old machinery he bought in online auctions of company liquidators.
One work called “The Amnesiacs” refers to a fictional biker group of Gulf War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and features objects like a wooden gun, a balaclava and a snake made from a branch in a wired cage.
“There are things here that hint at disaster, decay, violence perhaps sometimes,” Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery, told Reuters at a press preview on Tuesday.
“And his world that he alludes to is very much a world of people who live outside the mainstream of contemporary culture.”
Nelson, who represented Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, takes his visitors through a labyrinth of corridors and rooms in one installation called “The Deliverance and The Patience”, which includes a travel agent’s office and a gambling den.
“Every time you walk into one of those rooms you feel like the people who were there have just left,” Rugoff said.
“And so in a way it’s a haunted house, because there are ghosts of all these people, whether they are laid-off factory workers, Gulf War veterans, sweatshop labourers, gamblers, cultists, you’ll run across all of them as you go through this exhibition.”
“Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons” opens on Wednesday and runs until May 7.
(Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
