The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureArt

Tate Britain Commission 2019: Mike Nelson at Tate Britain

Tate Britain Commission 2019: Mike Nelson at Tate Britain | Exhibition review
22 March 2019
The editorial unit
Avatar
The editorial unit
22 March 2019

Exhibition and art

The editorial unit

Tate Britain Commission 2019: Mike Nelson

★★★★★

Dates

18th March 2019 - 6th October 2019

Entry

Free

Links & directions

TwitterInstagramWebsiteMap

The soaring, neo-classical grandeur of the Duveen Galleries in the heart of the Tate Britain has provided a fitting stage for sculptural exhibitions since their opening in 1937. In recent years, an array of British artistic talent has been invited annually to meet the challenge imposed by this vast space. Anthea Hamilton (2018), Phyllida Barlow (2014), Fionna Banner (2010) and Martin Creed (2008) are just some of those to have been commissioned.

Over the next few months, it is the turn of Mike Nelson, a significant figure in the British art scene since his large, immersive, walk-through architectural installation, The Coral Reef – now owned by the Tate – plunged itself somewhat disorientingly into the public’s consciousness in 2000.

The Loughborough-born artist, twice nominated for the Turner Prize (in 2001 and 2007) and British representative at the 2011 Venice Biennale, has produced a hugely loaded exhibition, The Asset Strippers, that evokes a fading aspect of Britain’s identity: its industrial heritage. One wanders into the galleries, enclosed by wooden surrounds for the duration, to be met by hulking relics from the nation’s proud manufacturing past. Some are identifiable, like the knitting machines and looms, their still-present threads and reels of cotton almost convincing us that their operators have briefly left the factory floor for a cigarette break. Other machines stand dormant, silent as the grave, their purpose now a distant blur in our services industry-dominated age.

The artist spent half a year amassing the array of industrial equipment to be found here, exploring salvage yards and online auctions of company liquidators. Collectively they stand as a testament to Britain’s decline as a manufacturing powerhouse whilst simultaneously alluding to the demise of the welfare state.

In this prestigious setting, the first gallery space in the United Kingdom to be specifically created for sculpture, Nelson’s gathering of old machinery and apparatus also resonate as aesthetic forms. Generally arranged in stacks on low plinths and workshop tables, they can be read as monuments to the old industries of the East Midlands that previously thrived in the artist’s youth. Nelson has also included woodwork from a former army barracks as well as doors from an old NHS hospital. The installed machinery’s strong outlines, silhouettes and surprisingly rich colours frequently prove reminiscent of sculpture, an obvious example being Jacob Epstein’s Rock Drill (1913).

There is a structure where the artist has positioned an engine at the centre of what appears to be a section of a wooden shed, various coloured sleeping bags having been arranged around it so that it juts out between them like a mast. For this observer it recalls Géricault’s 1819 work, The Raft of the Medusa, a painting that referred to an infamous event where, following the sinking of their ship at sea, ordinary seaman had been deserted by their commanders, the latter claiming all of the lifeboats for themselves. Nelson is perhaps thus alluding to the devastating effect of Britain’s closing factories on local communities, insinuating betrayal at the hands of those in power, the resulting unemployment and, in severe cases, homelessness.

Nelson has brought a palpable sense of melancholy to the Duveen Galleries. He has described himself as a “frustrated archaeologist” and here he has brought to the surface the remnants of Britain’s manufacturing industries that have been in terminable decline for decades. His interest in the machinery’s social contexts has led him to arrange them and manipulate them, drawing on their own peculiar kind of haunting beauty. In these post-Imperial surroundings, The Asset Strippers throws into sharp focus where this nation sits as its political future looms on the horizon.

★★★★★

James White
Photo: Tate, Matt Greenwood

Tate Britain Commission 2019: Mike Nelson is at Tate Britain from 18th March until 6th October 2019. For further information visit the exhibition’s website here.

Related Itemsfeaturedreview

More in Art

Cornelia Parker at Tate Britain

★★★★★
James White
Read More

Our Time on Earth at the Barbican

★★★★★
Jessica Wall
Read More

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms at Tate Modern

★★★★★
Cristiana Ferrauti
Read More

Walter Sickert at Tate Britain

★★★★★
Sophia Moss
Read More

Dopamine Land

★★★★★
Sarah Bradbury
Read More

Sony World Photography Awards

★★★★★
Sophia Moss
Read More

Raphael at the National Gallery

★★★★★
Umar Ali
Read More

Inspiring Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts at the Wallace Collection

★★★★★
Jessica Wall
Read More

Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution at the V&A

★★★★★
Sophia Moss
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Exhibition and art

The editorial unit

Tate Britain Commission 2019: Mike Nelson

★★★★★

Dates

18th March 2019 - 6th October 2019

Entry

Free

Links & directions

TwitterInstagramWebsiteMap

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Julius Caesar at Shakespeare’s Globe
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Banter Jar at Lion & Unicorn Theatre: “An authentic and timely one-woman show”
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • The Buddhist on Death Row by David Sheff
    ★★★★★
    Literature
  • Three-Michelin-star restaurants L’Effervescence and SingleThread announce first post-Covid collaboration in Tokyo
    Food & Drinks
  • The Innocents
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Cornelia Parker at Tate Britain
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7th June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • Grease at Dominion Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Florence and the Machine – Dance Fever
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Cornelia Parker at Tate Britain
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Grease at Dominion Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Florence and the Machine – Dance Fever
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Warpaint – Radiate Like This
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Operation Mincemeat at Riverside Studios
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Vita & Virginia opens the BFI Flare Film Festival | Movie review
Henry Paker: Man Alive at Soho Theatre | Theatre review