Mike Nelson: Coral Reef Is A Labyrinthine, 15-Room Installa

The document discusses Mike Nelson's installation artwork The Coral Reef from 2000. It was originally shown at Matt's Gallery in London and has now been acquired by the Tate gallery. The installation is a labyrinthine space with 15 rooms designed to disorient visitors and represent ideologies through the contents of seemingly abandoned rooms. Nelson creates immersive spaces that visitors can get lost in both physically and imaginatively.

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Mike Nelson: Coral Reef Is A Labyrinthine, 15-Room Installa

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Angelica Gonzalez

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I

ts a decade since Mike Nelson built

his seminal work, The Coral Reef,
at Matts Gallery in Londons East
End. It has now been acquired by
the Tate and put on display through the end of
2011, a welcome adjunct to Nelsons selection
as Britains representative at next years Venice
Biennale.
Coral Reef is a labyrinthine, 15-room installa-
tion in the style of William Burroughss inter-
zoneshallucinatory spaces between worlds or
ideas. Here they take the form of waiting rooms,
which Nelson first had perfectly replicated and
then scuffed back to a seedy, dilapidated state
originally inspired, he says, by a South London
minicab office. Various, potentially conflicting,
ideologies are symbolized by the contents of
these ostensibly just-abandoned rooms. The
occupants seem to be what Nelson terms mod-
ern primitives, or figures at the margins of capi-
talist society, such as revolutionaries, hoodlums,
evangelists, and drug users. Even when you know
roughly what to expect, its easy to get disoriented
here, an experience exacerbated by finding a
room duplicated or having to leave via a fake fire
exit that would normally set off an alarm.
Since The Coral Reef was made in 2000,
Nelson has been frequently approached to make
similar places to get lost in. Projects in Venice,
New York, Istanbul, Sydney, San Francisco, and
Copenhagen have enhanced his reputation while
responding more directly to their geographic
and institutional surroundings than perhaps did
Nelsons prototype, which could then be seen as
the originating myth or global template for more
locally grounded projects of this kind.
As Nelson says, a work such as this relies on
the spaces in between what is actually there. It
acts like a catalyst, coercing you into imaginative
space. These residues of suggested narratives
pull you into several spherespsychological,
sociopolitical, and anthropological. To achieve
this effect, the artist employs a wide range of
influencesmost obviously, fantastic fiction
(Borges, Ballard, Lem), outsider subcultures
(Nelsons early works were presented as made
by a biker gang), current political concerns, and
the history of installation art (clearly Nauman
and the Kabakovs). Consequently, Nelsons work
can be experienced both on a visceral, immedi-
ate level, and by tracking down his intellectual
sources and attempting a more elaborate reading.
Crime, the black economy, the growing under-
class, and antisocial aspects of the Internet are
all up for grabs in the teeming ecology of
The Coral Reef, which, as its name suggests,
accommodates multiple, if often fragile life forms and strategies. Much of what
seems to be going on in these rooms deserves our sympathy, and there is a sense
that, as Nelson puts it, all of us are lost in a world of lost people. The works
vacant atmosphere, augmented by such props as a gun and a mask, or, in the
heroin users room, drugs and pictures of horses hanging on the wall, suggests
a yearning for escapebut the boxed-in arrangement does more to entrap than
to liberate.
Various narratives can be constructed around The Coral Reef, but it is ultimately
open-ended, in that there is no single cause from which Nelsons scenarios are
derived or by means of which they can be forensically solved. In that respect,
the original work was remarkably prescient of the atmosphere of abandonment,
foreboding, and paranoia that rapidly followed the events of 9/11. I found myself
playing an undercover cop when visiting Tate Britain: these are surely the very
places one would need to infiltrate to find out what plots are being hatched. As
powerful as it ever was, this is the return of a masterpiece.
Mike Nelson, The Coral Reef, 2000/10, installation view, Tate Britain. Courtesy Matts Gallery, London. 7 1
MIKE NELSON Tate Britain | London
~Paul Carey-Kent
ARTUS 2010-11 3
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