One can only try to imagine what Nelson will conjure up to transform the British Pavilion, but Adrian Searle insists his work must "punch above its weight" if he is to compete with the installation big hitters of recent years such as Elmsgreen and Dragset (2009), Gregor Schneider (2001) and Christian Boltanski at this year's Monumenta.
Nelson's installations offer the possibility to be more than transported, to be transformed; locked in a performance which is encountered rather than conducted, sensational as well as sensory.
Richard Grayson, from his essay on The Deliverance and the Patience:
"We move through the wooden door into spaces that shift us between sweatshop and workshop, travel agents and gambling den, from rooms for pedagogy to rooms for pleasure. Spaces where we can slip from one state and condition into another. The immediately startling thing about this is that these spaces and architectures are unpeopled- we have entered some Marie Celeste, and we are perhaps the first person to step there since... well, whatever happened... and first off it is ourselves that we find being shaped and articulated by the spaces as we are cast in the role of part trespasser, part archaeologist and part detective: a person moving through the traces of other's existences trying to understand what catastrophe may have caused this emptiness and what condition may have shaped the inhabitants lives."
Nelson has the opportunity to create something quite incredible, I'll follow Searle in saying "I really hope Nelson does something extreme, and manages to excel himself. I really hope he fucks with the pavilion, and with our heads."
Pictured: Mike Nelson Preface to the 2004 edition (Triple Bluff Canyon) (2004) showing as part of Crash at the Gagosian Gallery (2010)
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