Mike Nelson (b. 1967) returns to Modern Art Oxford this autumn with a new exhibition, his first at the gallery since 2004.
Developed in response to that earlier moment, the exhibition reflects on the 22 years that have passed and the distance – personal, political and cultural –between then and now. Created on site, it brings together new and reworked elements to form an environment that unfolds across the gallery.
As in much of Nelson’s work, ideas of travel, memory and displacement run throughout. The exhibition also turns inward, touching on questions around narcissism and self-portraiture, shaped in part by a return to both the artist’s own past work and the history of the institution itself.
References to countercultural movements and more recent political events appear in the background, from the idealism associated with Woodstock to the unrest surrounding the storming of the US Capitol. These are set alongside echoes of different wartime periods, including Vietnam, Iraq and the present, suggesting shifting ideas of protest, individualism and collective action over time.
Rather than setting out a clear narrative, the exhibition remains open-ended. Visitors are invited to move through it at their own pace, forming their own connections along the way.
Mike Nelson, 3rd October 2026 – 11th April 2027 Modern Art Oxford
About the artist
Mike Nelson came to prominence in the late 1990s, creating psychological environments by sifting through the debris of modern life. His installations are expansive dominions for assemblages of cultural detritus, often referencing specific works of literature and countercultural or failed political movements. Working with figures and materials on the fringes of society, Nelson asks his viewers to spend time inhabiting worlds that, while foreign on the surface, reveal intrinsic truths and modes of thought that affect even the most basic cultural activities. His work has been widely shown and collected by, amongst others, Tate, Hayward Gallery and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Nelson lives and works in London.
