The first incarnation of that was the educational exhibition for dogs in 96 are made in Bucharest where it was like a sort of a room just strewn with rubbish well but amongst it I'd made out of the rubbish 40 different tableau and objects about while we're human and they're dogs. The material is as interesting as a tableau and in a way when you look at the assets strippers that's what that is It constantly becomes monumental sculpture becomes like something from the lower halls of the British Museum but then at certain moments it just becomes parts of stuff the matter it's made from. "I don't really care if people don't think it's all you know I just quite enjoy
Ben Luke talks to Mike Nelson about his influences—from the worlds of literature, film, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Nelson, born in 1967 in Loughborough in the UK, is one of the most significant British sculptors and installation artists of this century. He has spent the past three decades assembling materials gathered in junkyards, flea markets, online auctions, even street-corner fly tips into often labyrinthine sculptural environments. He creates distinctive spaces that suggest fictional (and often science-fictional) narratives, while alluding to diverse histories, obscure countercultural or political movements and current affairs as well as his own biography. He discusses the early influence of Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon, his elation at discovering the work of Paul Thek, how fiction—and science-fiction writers like Stanislaw Lem, J.G. Ballard and the Strugatsky brothers—liberated his approach to art making, and the enduring influence of film-makers including Jean-Luc Godard and Sergei Parajanov.
Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery, London, until 7 May.
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