The Fruitmarket in Edinburgh is hosting an exhibition showcasing Mike Nelson’s Humpty Dumpty: A Transient History of Mardin Earthworks Low Rise. As a part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, the exhibition features work by a renowned British artist, with his immersive installations that transform the spaces they inhabit. Notably, Nelson does not merely transform the spaces; he also ‘owns’ them as if they are an integral component of the installation.
The exhibition comprises two sections: Low Rise in the warehouse and upper gallery consists of an installation and a set of photographs from a deconstructed social housing in South London in 2014. Mardin Artworks are on show in lower gallery. It’s based on the photographs Mike Nelson took in 2012 during his visit to the city, which was undergoing a ‘redevelopment’ at that time. While different from each other, these three spaces are interwoven, creating a cohesive experience for visitors. It’s not just about what we see, but also about how we feel – Nelson stabilises our emotions throughout the exhibition.
The exhibition’s title, Humpty Dumpty references the nursery rhyme about not being able to put things back together, “highlighting the irreversible nature of demolition and loss.” Mike Nelson uses photography to witness, document, and archive those places that no longer exist.
In the upper gallery, there are 1:1 ratio photographs of Heygate Estate, a social housing complex in South London which faced controversy during its demolition between 2011 and 2014 as part of a regeneration project. In a 10 minute-long video interview that can be seen in the information room, Mike Nelson notes, “The images have been printed to appear real scale in an attempt to invoke that which has been demolished and disappeared.” According to Nelson, “Disappearance relates to those that inhabited it and the ideology that made those homes possible.” Although there are traces of habitation in the photographs and installations, there’s no people in them.
The photographs rise like sculptures constructed by the artist, held between two glass sheets and supported by wood taken from demolished buildings. He has also positioned two video-game machines and attached two crosses of Saint George that he found in a junk shop, to separate frames… He notes in the video: “Obviously the ubiquitous cross of Saint George sort of like hanging from windows during football matches in areas where perhaps the politics aren’t that of yours is something which I’m very familiar with, but I’m also very familiar with the cross of Saint George on the chest of a knight in the 12th century in the crusades.”
Moving to the lower gallery, we see the photographs from Mardin, a predominantly Kurdish old city in southeastern Turkey and Mike Nelson disrupts our perception of scale by strategically placing the photos on the lower part of the walls. When you walk into the hall, you need a few seconds to adjust.
Nelson visited Mardin during the Biennale in 2012. He explains that encounter in the video: “The city I witnessed was undergoing an unprecedented amount of redevelopment, mainly of infrastructure – drainage, water, internet provision – that demanded huge excavations and reconstruction work. These trenches, piles, and constructions I renamed ‘earthworks’ after the title borrowed by the land artist Robert Smithson from the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, attributing this transient or passing moment to something akin to a work of art.”
In the photographs Mike Nelson took during his walks around random construction areas, you see windows of shops, old buildings, an excavator, a statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey, a still Turkish flag hanging from a pole, as well as trenches, piles, screws, steel, dust, and dirt… Just as he didn’t photograph people, he also doesn’t show any specific visual materials from Kurdish culture, although Mardin is predominantly Kurdish. In his texts, he emphasises that the destruction of buildings is not just about the structures themselves, it’s also about people’s lives.
The materials we see in the photos resonate with those Mike Nelson likes to use in his work. He completes the photographs with the lighting installed above the frames, the cables hanging down alongside the frames, echoing the scenes seen in the photographs. He also plays with the structure of the walls, opening channels in them that let us see inside.
Alongside the photographs from random construction sites in Mardin, there’s a hand-annotated map as a result of his walks around, and documentation of the city. Although Mike Nelson chooses not to openly place these events in a political context, or explicitly name the political reasons for the constructions in these cities, he underlines the fact that they are politically motivated.
For this exhibition, Fruitmarket’s Warehouse has been transformed into the “machine room” or “driving force,” as indicated in the exhibition texts. This space houses a large installation, presenting approximate reconstructions of two flats from the demolished Heygate Estate.
Nelson has been working in the Warehouse since early May: it’s not just a space for his installation – t’s a workspace for him. The photographs taken in London and Mardin between 2010-2014 were printed here in this room by a printer from 2014.
Within the installation, there exists an opportunity to observe an unfinished artwork that was ‘ceased’ during its construction in 2014, but Nelson has chosen not to mention the reasons. According to the exhibition texts, ‘Low Rise’ was conceived as a temporary public project with the dual purpose of commemorating both the south London housing estate and the era of post-war Britain in which Nelson ‘was born and the housing estate had come to represent’. He explains, “originally the project in South London was motivated by the idea of making a burial mound. To take a public building to bury itself back in itself to become something of a commentary upon a point in time that I was born into and lived through a postwar Britain, a Britain with a sort of vision of progress and support a welfare state, a national health service and the fact that this was somehow crumbling, falling apart.”
Around the installation there are numerous objects that can be remembered from the photographs in the upper gallery, like the ‘home sweet home’ sign on the door, old staircases, a pipe on the floor… There’s also small bits that are from the photographs of Mardin throughout the rooms.
In one of the print rooms, there is an old 3D map of Turkey on the wall above a desk. On the desk, there are notes likely related to the photographs from Mardin. Is this table owned by Mike Nelson? There is an abandoned plastic bag in the corner, labeled “Ayval?k,” a Turkish town. The leather office chair and the MDF coffee table resemble a random office from the 1990’s in Turkey, but it’s possible that they are from somewhere else in the world, just like the can of Coca-Cola left on the printer. Who left it? Was it Nelson or one of the workers while carrying the furniture for the installation? Why did he use old furniture and items in the room? He likes leaving things quite unclear.
What are the unexpected commonalities between these two cities, one a prominent financial hub in Europe, and the other an ancient Kurdish metropolis located in eastern Turkey? For Mike Nelson, both sets recall a moment of transition – one of demolition, the other of reconstruction, and interestingly they look alike. Nelson’s explanation of what he was interested in in the first place takes us to a conclusion: “In a sense you’ve got a building coming up, being rebuilt and you’ve got a building being taken down to rebuild as another building. But both underpinned by a certain politic.”
Thank you to Omur Sahin Keyif (Insta: @theartsreporter) for this review.
