Mike Nelson - Coral Reef

Mike Nelson: The Coral Reef, 1999, installation view;

image courtesy  of the Artist and Matt’s Gallery, London, Collection of the Tate.

On a recent trip to London, I went to visit Mike Nelson's Coral Reef recently acquired by Tate Collections and installed at Tate Britain until January 15th. This work was made in 1999 for Matt's Gallery in London, at the very end of the 20th Century but before events which have come to define current times; 9/11, 7/7 and the economic crash of 2008 in particular. In the light of our recent history this claustrophobic, disorientating piece has extraordinary resonances.

Entering the work through a grubby reception room, you begin your journey into a complex series of rooms and corridors. Each room has its own character - all are shabby, depressed, clues are scattered throughout to tempt us to construct a narrative for ourselves. The title, Coral Reef reflects Nelson's concept of a fragile structure which exists under a metaphorical ocean surface, in which "...in a sense each room is indicative of a different belief system". We are "...invited to become lost in this world of lost people" and that is exactly what the experience achieved for me.

Under electric light, the structure doubles back on itself, the spaces are tight and only just big enough to occupy. A sense of panic rises even though this is obviously a work of art, installed in a gallery - one cannot actually come to harm or get forever lost in the maze - the fiction is powerful enough to suspend the rational just enough to allow the anxiety to emerge. You can hear others elsewhere in the structure, doors are opening and closing, squeaking on their hinges, it could be reassuring but it also increases the panic. The residual evidence of characters living out their days, conducting their business and worshiping at their own particular alter in these uncared for spaces is disturbing, familiar and loaded with prophetic tension.  In a carefully constructed, paranoia educing twist we are led to believe we have reached the room through which we entered only to find the exit leads us into a loading bay, its shutters down - we have no choice but to turn and retrace our steps. 

It is a remarkable experience, here is Mike Nelson talking about the work and its contemporary significance.

Susan Hiller

Susan Hiller - Witness 2000 - seen here

I went along to Tate Britain whilst in London for the Susan Hiller exhibition, it only runs until 15 May and it's fantastic, so do get along to see it if you can. A major survey of her 40 year career, the show takes in the sweep of her work from the dream mapping experiments and cut up paintings of the 1970's, to innovative installation experiments with sound and image and quasi-anthropological collections of objects. She explores issues of the subconscious, the unconscious, the supernatural and the uncanny with a scientific veneer derived in part from her training as an anthropologist. 

I have bought the exhibition catalogue because the show was so personally powerful and full of important references for my own practice. I'm looking forward to reading and thinking about her work and the extensive influence she has had on current practice.

Tacita Dean - Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2009

Tacita Dean - Tate Britain Christmas Tree 2009 - seen here

Tacita Dean has been invited to create the Tate Christmas tree for 2009. It is simple, elegant, melancholy and imbued with subtle signifiers about Christmas, about living in Berlin, about time passing, about 2009.

The Guardian have published a lovely set of images.

Beating the Bounds

Des Hughes - Waiting for the Miracle - seen here

Whilst in Tate Britain, I had a look at a small show next door to the Turner Prize galleries called Beating the Bounds. Part of the Art Now programme of exhibitions at the Tate, the title refers to an ancient British custom in which a community walks the parish boundaries of their village stopping at certain significant objects (such as a tree or a wall) to beat the ground with a willow branch (or sometimes a small boy!).

It is a quiet show - nothing particularly brash or jarring. It investigates specific artists' responses to the materiality as well as the meaning of their work and our reactions as we encounter them in the space; the '...meeting of matter with matter'.

The work includes painting from Frank Aurbach, Simon Ling, Glenn Brown and Helene Appel; sculpture from Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Deacon, Brian Griffiths and Des Hughes; film from Emily Wardill.

I liked the idea of the show and the reference to the old custom - although I am not convinced by the concept, the original custom was about re-affirming territory - recreating the reality of place and claiming ownership. This show is more about democratising the tight divisions between disciplines; breaking down of the barriers between craft, process, materiality and art.

Richard Deacon's ceramic sculpture North - Fruit in conversation with Brian Griffiths' monumental smiling Stone Face (Bear) and Glenn Brown's Teen Age Riot, a desk encrusted with paint residue like a giant paint palette. Eduardo Paolozzi's Kardinal Syn sculpture of a gagged/bound head reflecting Frank Aurbach's impasto Small Head of E.O.W.

I particularly liked Des Hughes Waiting for the Miracle; objects resembling a knight's chain mail boots, gloves and helmet cast from old woolen clothing in resin and iron. There was something vulnerable and dislocated about these items shown on separate plinths; something painfully absurd.