Mike Nelson
Michael “Mike” Nelson (born 20 August 1967) is a contemporary British installation artist. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2011. Nelson has twice been nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001 and 2007.
Nelson’s installations always only exist for the time period of the exhibition which they were made for. They are extended labyrinths, which the viewer is free to find their own way through, and in which the locations of the exit and entrance are often difficult to determine. His “The Deliverance and the Patience” in a former brewery on the Giudecca was in the 2001 Venice Biennale. In September 2007, his exhibition A Psychic Vacuum was held in the old Essex Street Market, New York. Essays on Nelson’s projects, ’24A Orwell Street King’s Cross Sydney’ and ‘The Deliverance and the Patience’ have been written by artist/curator Richard Grayson. His major installation The Coral Reef (2000), was on display at Tate Britain until the end of 2011. It consists of fifteen rooms and a warren of corridors. This work and its showing at Matt’s Gallery earned him his 2001 Turner Prize nomination.
In 2011 The British Council presented I, Impostor, a new work by Mike Nelson conceived and created for the British Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.
Nelson’s large-scale sculptural installations immerse the viewer in an unfolding narrative which develops through a sequence of meticulously realised spatial structures. The weaving of fact and fiction are fundamental to Nelson’s practice, and his constructs are steeped in both literary and historic references, whilst drawing upon the geography and cultural context of their location.
Throughout his career, Nelson has constantly returned to and re-examined territories within his own practice, and his new exhibition for the British Pavilion followed the success of his first major solo presentation in Venice in 2001, The Deliverance and the Patience, which was shown as part of the collateral programme at the 49th edition of the Biennale.
I have really enjoyed looking at his work and how he has used installations to express what he wanted to say in this art work. I think they work really well and they are really powerful pieces this is something I want to bring to my own work.
