Mike Nelson returns to Modern Art Oxford with a new commission, an installation of gutted structures and a suspended bunker in a desert of sand.
Mike Nelson is back at Modern Art Oxford with a major new installation, Double Negative (The Clown), which opened on 3 October and runs until 11 April 2027. It's his first time showing at the gallery in twenty-two years; back in 2004 he put on Triple Bluff Canyon, and this new commission takes over the same upper galleries.
Nelson spent about six weeks building the work on-site, turning those upper rooms into a labyrinthine pathway of gutted and abandoned edifices. The whole thing leads to a stark, bunker-like structure suspended in a desert of sand, strewn with abandoned emblems of religion, nation, satire and philosophy. It's a large-scale environment you walk through rather than something you just look at from the side.
There's a direct line back to that 2004 show, too. Nelson describes Double Negative as a reimagining of Triple Bluff Canyon from a contemporary perspective, parodying the self-obsession of the present and tracing how ideas of freedom have shifted from mid-twentieth-century counterculture to the rise of libertarianism today. It draws on literature, travel, counterculture and political history, mixing new sculptures with remnants of former works and objects he's collected over a lifetime of making. The installation is supported by the Modern Art Oxford Commissioning Circle and Nuffield College, Oxford.
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It's at Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, OX1 1BP, and runs through to 11 April 2027, so there's plenty of time to catch it if you can't make it this month. Entry is free and no booking is required.
