Double Negative (The Clown) is a positive at MAO Oxford
Updated: 1 day ago
By Theresa Thompson, TT's Art Correspondent
Mike Nelson, Double Negative (The Clown), 2026. Installation view, Modern Art Oxford, 2026. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Photo: Dan Weill
They say you should never go back to a place. But that is exactly what Mike Nelson has done with his bold new exhibition, Double Negative (The Clown), developed in direct response to his earlier show at MAO in 2004, Triple Bluff Canyon.
I remember seeing that installation all those 22 years ago. No one could forget it. It made such an impact. I’d not known what to expect back then, and was astounded turning the corner into the main gallery upstairs. The space was transformed. Nobody could even get in; the floor was swamped by a towering sand dune that reached almost to the rafters. And at the far end half-buried by desert sands stood an old hut.
British sculptor and installation artist, Mike Nelson (b. 1967) who represented Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and has twice been nominated for the Turner Prize, is known for his complex, immersive and site-specific constructions that disrupt and overwhelm the location they are in.
Which is exactly the right description for this new work, a major commission from Mike Nelson to celebrate Modern Art Oxford’s 60th anniversary.
Like Nelson, I also was returning to MAO for his second show there. And I knew what to expect this time - more or less.
Mike Nelson, Double Negative (The Clown), 2026. Installation view, Modern Art Oxford, 2026. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Photo: Dan Weill
But would going back lead to disappointment? Would some of that original magic be destroyed, as Agatha Christie’s famous quote might imply? No. I was intrigued.
What would be different? What the same? Would it hold that same sense of power, destruction and protest as previously? In truth, everything was different, changed by time and wind and experience, but similar elements were at play and the choreography much the same. Again, the top gallery was transformed, the drift of sand still there but eroded and blown aside so that now it is possible to walk across the floor between the dune edges and examine the detritus of ages littering the scene. The curious could now walk across to that broken old ‘woodshed’ and then continue along the run-down mining shaft towards other new and reworked parts of the show.
One big difference is that Nelson now leaves the infrastructure of his new installation raw – “the trick exposed” - the wire frame supporting the heavy sand is visible. Thus, perhaps encouraging a sort of resolution in onlookers, balancing the substance that the installation is made of and the artwork that it is has become.
Ideas of travel, memory and displacement still run throughout the installation, as in much of Nelson’s work. The whole show is a monumental reflection on the two decades that have passed and the distance – personal, political and cultural change – between 2004 and now. Cultural and subcultural references to more recent political events are also apparent.
Triple Bluff Canyon took form at MAO at the same time as the Iraq War. In an essay displayed in a corner of the gallery, Nelson remarks that wars still rage today in our world. Rusting oil drums, torn tyres, and broken timber join the litter of Socialist Party pamphlets, tarot cards, a discarded crucifix in the spaces where sand once obstructed – objects intended “to convey the global changes over the last 22 years”.
Along with the rubbish, the spent ideas and ideals, what else has been discarded? it seems to ask.
Mike Nelson, Double Negative (The Clown), 2026. Installation view, Modern Art Oxford, 2026. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Photo: Dan Weill
Following the dim corridor, you pass through a mystifying octagonal space reminiscent of an early cinema lobby, its doors leading nowhere –it’s deliberately disorienting, I guess, like much in this exhibition – then in a side room with a ricketydoor that you enter one at a time, there’s an uninviting cot bed and shelves upon shelves stuffed with old travel guides. I recognise several but resist the urge to take one down. Is there a sense of desperation here, I wonder. An attempt to hold on to the past? A place to dream, of faraway places, of better times, a sanctuary maybe to escape momentarily from all that dereliction and decay - that idea of entropy - that pervades outside?
Nelson has created a bleak environment; his self-reflection is bleak (the Double Negative of the show’s title becomes clear in the second gallery). It was a strange experience back then; it’s a strange experience now, but in holding up a mirror to the world today as Nelson sees it certainly gives pause for thought.
MAO suggests that rather than setting out a clear narrative, the exhibition remains open-ended, and so it invites visitors to move through it at their own pace, making their own connections along the way.
As for never going back? Well, yes of course, a second visit can never quite match the impact of the first – visually - but this updated version had its own power and was artful and intriguing enough for a repeat.
Double Negative (The Clown)
Modern Art Oxford
Showing until: 11 April 2027.
Free to enter.
On Paradise: Between Hope and Memory
While in central Oxford, there’s another exhibition that you may like to pop over and see: Saad Qureshi’s On Paradise: Between Hope and Memory, which is on at the newly opened Schwarzmann Centre for the Humanities. The dreamy pensive sculptural installation that Qureshi has created in response to the collections at the Oxford University Museums is on until 6th December, and also free.
Meld, 2024. Mixed media including wood, Idenden, sand, paint. 163 (H) x 67.5 (W) x 67.5 (D) cm. Photography by Hugh Pryor
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