The Asset Strippers

Tate Britain Commission 2019. Nelson transformed the grand spaces of the Duveen Galleries into something between a sculpture court and an asset strippers' warehouse. He carefully selected objects from the post-war Britain that framed his childhood - including enormous knitting machines, woodwork stripped from a former army barracks, graffitied steel awnings and doors from an NHS hospital. Nelson's project was informed by the Duveen Galleries' origins as the first purpose-built sculpture galleries in England, intended to rival the sculpture court at the British Museum and the V&A's Cast Courts. It turned the neo-classical galleries into a warehouse of monuments to a lost era and the vision of society it represented.