Mike Nelson: Double Negative (The Clown)

Following his acclaimed 2004 exhibition, internationally renowned British artist Mike Nelson returns to Modern Art Oxford with a major new commission.

Known for his atmospheric, large-scale installations, Nelson transforms galleries using materials and objects gathered from everyday life. His environments draw on literature, travel, counterculture and political history, creating immersive spaces that feel at once familiar and unsettling.

Nelson has used the invitation to revisit Modern Art Oxford’s galleries and explore the idea of collapsing time between his previous and current exhibitions. His new commission reimagines the vision and meaning of his memorable 2004 Triple Bluff Canyon from a contemporary perspective. Double Negative (The Clown) parodies the self-obsession of our current moment and traces the shifting ideas of freedom that have unfolded in his lifetime, from the countercultural movements of the mid-twentieth century to the rise of libertarianism today.

Created onsite, Double Negative (The Clown) brings together new sculptures with remnants of former works and materials collected by Nelson from a lifetime of making. Some of these objects invoke belief systems that have framed the world through which they have passed, now encountered as both votive offerings and ideological relics. Belief, freedom and protest all haunt the memory of the original exhibition while an ideological battle continues: the battle for imagination that may still be won – or lost.