Output details

I, IMPOSTOR.

Commissioning body British Council.

1 June - 27 November 2011.

Commissioned by the British Council, I, Impostor was conceived and created for the British Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia in 2011. Nelson’s starting point for this new work was one of his previous installations which he used to critically reflect upon biennales, the geographic position of Venice, and changes in Nelson’s own perception of his artistic practice. Magazin: Büyük Valide Han, originally built for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial in 2003, was a complex installation comprising of a darkroom on split levels filled with black and white photographic images, housed in a cell-like space within the Han, a 17th-century trading station for merchants in Istanbul.

Based on Nelson’s memory of the earlier work and photographs, with I, Impostor, Nelson set out to rebuild the original darkroom and sections of the Han inside the late 19th-century British Pavilion in Venice. This entailed three months of work on site and the complete rebuilding of the interior of the building to house two dark rooms, domes and corridors, and the sourcing of materials and objects. The first installation artist to be invited to reconfigure the British Pavilion, by recreating and re-working this earlier installation for Venice, Nelson both created a link between the two former great mercantile centres of the east-west/west-east axes, and drew upon his own histories within the cities and their respective biennials of 2003 and 2001. With over 400,000 visitors, the exhibition was reviewed world-wide.

The British Council publication, devised by Nelson with commissioned texts by Dan Cameron and Rachel Withers, documents Nelson's research process and the work in progress. Mike Nelson, 1, Imposter; 2011, ISBN: 0863556620, 9780863556623 146 pp. On-line 2011 interview with Nelson: http://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/