Surreal installations populated by miscellaneous objects, and inundated with psychological charge, consume the Hayward Gallery, London, in Mike Nelson's latest exhibition Extinction Beckons (22 February–7 May 2023).
Interested in opening the door to dystopian worlds, Nelson's immersive show leads visitors through a moody labyrinth of spaces that probe our spatial awareness and subconsciously rattle the senses.
In one room, Triple Bluff Canyon (the woodshed) (2004) transforms the ordinarily clinical white walls of the gallery into a giant sand box littered with mangled car tyres and rogue planks of wood.
When you descend into Nelson's alternate realities not only do your surroundings disquietingly mutate, but your every sense is ambushed; dimly lit rooms leading to overwhelmingly bright spaces test your sight, the stench of chemicals saturate your nostrils, and you almost stifle in the rush of hot air consuming the space.
Transporting viewers into sinister imagined spaces that disturbingly mimic reality, Nelson's body of work comments on the different ways of living and the ways in which they might unfold given previous histories and failed political systems.
