Category Archives: Mike Nelson

BRITISH PAVILLION Mike Nelson
British Council

Mike Nelson represented Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, this edition was published to accompany his installation in the British Pavillion that year. Commissioned by the percipient Richard Riley, SecMoCo were asked to work with the artist for the second time (see Triple Bluff Canyon, Modern Art Oxford) on devising a publication appropriate to his work.

First published, in an edition of 1,500 copies, by The British Council, London, UK, June 1, 2011; commissioning editor: Richard Riley; coordinating editors: Gemma Latty, Emma Williams; texts: Dan Cameron, with an interview between the artist, Rachael Withers and guests.

135 x 205mm; 146pp; 92 images, including 18pp colour plate section with 74 b&w images in uncoated section; casebound with 1-colour embossed cover (no dust jacket); grey endpapers; 4 colour printed ‘inner covers’; thread sewn; printed by CPI, UK.

Context from the British Council website:
Throughout his career, Nelson has constantly returned to and re-examined territories within his own practice. […] For the British Pavilion in 2011, Nelson elected to take as his starting point another of his own key works from the past decade, Magazin: Büyük Valide Han, originally built for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial in 2003. […] Nelson has referred to the work for Istanbul as being a parasitical installation that had lodged itself into a 17th century building. Based on the photographic memory of the earlier work, with I, Impostor, Nelson not only rebuilt the original darkroom but sections of the caravanserai itself, so that now a building, from another time and place, exists inside the late 19th century British Pavilion in Venice.

The British Council published a fully illustrated book to commemorate Mike Nelson’s exhibition, which includes newly commissioned texts by Dan Cameron and Rachel Withers, and colour plates of the new work in progress.

TRIPLE BLUFF CANYON
Mike Nelson

Commissioned by the elegantly exacting Suzanne Cotter, this book was published to accompany the exhibition by 2004 Turner Prize nominee Mike Nelson at Modern Art Oxford.

The front cover utilised an Arts Magazine cover from May 1978 depicting a seminal work by Robert Smithson that the artist had recreated in the gallery at MAO. As such, the title and cover information was transferred to the reverse, adopting the typographic style of the gallery ads of that period.

First published, in an edition of 1000 copies, by Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK, 01 January 1999; edited by Suzanne Cotter; texts: Jeremy Millar and Brian Aldiss; 210x170mm; 72pp; 58 images, including 8pp colour plate section, 50 b&w image in uncoated section; paperback with 4-colour cover thread sewn; printed by Art Quarters, UK.

Context, from Andrew Mead at the Architect’s Journal website:
‘Entering a Mike Nelson installation is like stumbling into a minicab office in the early hours of the morning in the wrong part of a town you don’t know – and then things get worse’