Mike  Nelson

The Contemporary Art Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Canada of work by the renowned British artist Mike Nelson. Comprising two significant new commissions, the exhibition includes an ambitious series of sculptures produced in partnership with The Power Plant in Toronto, and a new photographic work made in association with the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff, its starting point family photographs taken between 1957 and 1972 by the distinguished Canadian anthropologist Dr. Wilson Duff.

Nelson is best-known for his labyrinthine architectural installations that unfold as narrative structures, where the viewer moves through rooms like a reader turns pages in a novel. These immersive environments are often seemingly abandoned, devoid of figures, yet imagining the unseen occupants of these intricate spaces is central to the viewer’s experience. For *I, IMPOSTOR*, Nelson’s major work for the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), much of the elaborate space appeared vacated, with the exception of a small room where lines of drying black and white photographs hung from wires that crisscrossed the ceiling. These images documented a seventeenth century caravanserai, photographed within the very building that housed a previous installation by Nelson during the 2003 Istanbul Biennale. The darkrooms within the Venice piece were a reconstruction of those adapted “found” spaces in the Eminönü district of Istanbul, the architecture within the British Pavilion a disjointed facsimile from memory and from the photographs of the caravanserai. Visualizing this ghostly photographer supposedly moving through the same space as the viewer, simultaneously suggested the architecture as narrative, but confused time and space; a shift of cities and decades shadowing personal and world histories. It presented a fractured and multi-layered narrative, a set of atmospheres that similarly inform Nelson’s discrete sculptural works.

While his cultural references are broad, touching on particular moments in science-fiction, literature and the Beat era, much of Nelson’s work can be linked through an archetypal figure of the lone wanderer. For the Contemporary Art Gallery, Nelson revisits ideas and forms first seen in *The Amnesiacs*, a serial project begun in 1996, which references a narrative involving an imaginary cast of characters — a group of “outsiders” to the mainstream who uncannily resemble a disembodied late twentieth-century biker gang, albeit without bikes. These quintessential outlaws of myth and literature, as depicted in the popular imagination of North America, are paralleled here with another favourite genre; that of the hunter or fur trader, exploring both groups’ economic underpinning of these romantic façades, and the resulting conflicts involved in the expansion of territory.

In this new work it is as if a beachcomber has gathered material from the ocean, imagined by Nelson as a gigantic intelligent entity, much like that of Lem’s planet “Solaris,” sifting the debris as a means to uncover truths about contemporary culture and our place within it. The roving characters, *The Amnesiacs*, have come together as interpreters, deciphering the collected material by creating assemblages akin to some form of disjointed memory or flashback, that when brought together may effect communication or reveal hidden meaning, the potential for a new and unified system of understanding. Nelson originally developed these thoughts after the unexpected death of his friend and collaborator, Erlend Williamson. In 1996 he had fallen to his death whilst climbing in the Scottish Highlands, at the time that Nelson was working on his first incarnation of what would become *The Amnesiacs*. Williamson, an artist and mountaineer whose family ancestry was of Orcadian descent, will contribute again; this time parts of his own narrative, and the very materials that surrounded him — those that remain present in his absence — will be woven into the fabric of the work.

Each of the new works is derived from the Canadian landscape: one is quite literally built with flotsam and jetsam collected off local shores, while the other re-imagines it. The second new piece is a sequence of projected 35mm slides produced during recent road trips across British Columbia and into Alberta, images that appear out of time. Collectively they trace another movement across the landscape as well as capture momentary pauses, underlining human interventions to the land. Nelson’s interest in the photographic depiction of the Canadian landscape came through seeing a series of slides from Dr. Wilson Duff’s family trips across the province, presented at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. As an anthropologist Duff was dedicated to understanding Northwest Coast cultures, even such private holidays were spent viewing aboriginal festivals or visiting the workshops of totem pole carvers. These images resonated with Nelson as much as the objects in the museum, as a language to be unraveled. They were of a time and place, but already displaced. In relation to this, Nelson has made a work that talks about the land itself and the artistic traditions inherent within it, especially those borne out of North America in the twentieth century and their re-translation as part of a British oeuvre. Nelson unearths the possible re-reading of such activities as cultural imperialism within both strands of the movement — an accusation that could ultimately be reflected within the activities of the artist himself.

CAG acknowledges the generous support of Rick Erickson and Donna Partridge, Jane Irwin and Ross Hill, and Randy and Julia Heward. With thanks to the Erlend Williamson Art Foundation.

### Biography

Born in Loughborough, UK in 1967, Mike Nelson lives and works in London. His solo exhibitions include *408 tons of imperfect geometry*, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2012); *I, IMPOSTOR*, British Pavilion, 54th Biennale di Venezia (2011); *A Psychic Vacuum*, Creative Time, New York (2007); *Triple Bluff Canyon*, Modern Art Oxford (2004); and *Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted.*, ICA, London (2001). Recent group shows include: *September 11*, MoMA PS1, New York (2011); *Altermodern*, Tate Britain, London (2009); *Eclipse: Art in a Dark Age*, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008); *Psycho Buildings*, Hayward Gallery, London; and *Turner Prize*, Tate Liverpool (2007). He is represented by 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.


ProgramGuideFall2013.pdf

A sculpture resembling a clown. A plastic jug from which orange fibres emerge is fastened upside down on a wooden stick with a red bow tied to it. A bright orange clown-like nose is held on by wire.

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A red sleeping bag lies on the floor of a lobby under a display case cover. Coins are placed on one edge of the sleeping bag. Behind, wooden double doors are installed at the entrance to a gallery.

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A large screen is installed in a darkened gallery space. Projected on screen is an image of a forest at daytime. In the foreground, a simple fire pit and log are visible on the forest floor.

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Large sculptures of found materials fill a gallery space. A tall ladder cart holds a huge rock, driftwood branch, and tire. Other sculptures of lumber, driftwood, rope, and metal surround it.

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Large sculptures of found materials fill a gallery space. The overall installation mimics a camping location. Two fake bonfires, ropes, and other wooded objects are visible in this image.

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A grey cap hangs from a short wooden beam installed vertically on a gallery wall. The cap has a black plastic snap which is modified to make the cap look like a cow’s face.

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A red cap hangs from a short wood stick installed vertically on a gallery wall. The cap is tied at the back, making its form resemble a bird resting on a tree. 

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A sculpture made from a plastic milk jug stuck upside down on a wood stick, from which arm-like metal rods extend out horizontally. Feathers attached to a wire band hang from the upper part of the jug.

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Large, rough wooden shelves are installed in a gallery space. Many objects such as a box,  clothes, a stack of rope, shoes, a shoulder bag, and notebooks are piled up on these shelves. 

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Detail image of large, rough wooden shelves installed in a gallery space. Assorted camping supplies, such as a stack of red rope, bars of chocolate, and earmuffs are placed on the wooden shelves.

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Mike Nelson

Amnesiac Hide was published on the occasion of solo exhibitions by Mike Nelson at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver from September 13th to November 3rd, 2013, and the Power Plant, Toronto from February 1st to May 19th, 2014.

The newly commissioned installation presents its audience with the notion of the lone traveler. Drawing on archetypes such as the fur trapper, the pioneering explorer, the Beatnik and the biker, Mike Nelson offers a new reading of the lone traveler, focusing on the significance of these characters in the context of masculinity and spirituality. This publication, that accompanies this new body of work, contains text contributions by Dick Hebdige, curator Jenifer Papararo and Julia Paoli, Jaki Irvine, Nigel Prince and Gaëtane Verna.


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