Obsolescence and Extinction in Mike Nelson’s Installation Artworks

Abstract

Obsolescence presents an opportunity to reflect on the impermanence of human presence. The ontological unpredictability of the obsolete means that objects relegated to social peripheries can unexpectedly solicit attention. Building off of a personal encounter with a discarded shoe sole jutting out of sand on the beach, this perspective examines how the obsolete objects that appear in Mike Nelson’s installation artworks are changed by their reappearance in his 2023 survey at the Hayward Gallery, a brutalist art gallery at the Southbank Centre in Central London. Nelson is a contemporary British installation artist who constructs large-scale dreamlike environments out of the very real detritus of post-industrial ruins. By forcing an encounter between trashed objects and spectators passing through gallery space, Nelson troubles the ocular habit that keeps waste out of sight (and out of institutional site). This perspective traces Nelson’s practice of forming and later reforming trash into sculptural installations, and considers how the obsolescence of his chosen materials can frustrate fixed categorizations of site, spectator, and sculpture.