Mike Nelson Wins Charles Wollaston Award Despite Sparse Auction Presence

Mike Nelson has won the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award, worth £25,000, for his 2016 work Untitled (public sculpture for a redundant space) shown at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in London. Born in Loughborough in 1967 and based in London, Nelson is known for large-scale, space-filling installations made from diverse materials. His work has been exhibited globally, including at the 303 Gallery in New York, Tramway in Glasgow, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Creative Time in New York, and the UK Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. In Italy, he showed at Galleria Franco Noero in 2009 and 2017. Group exhibitions include The High Line in New York, the 13th Lyon Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, MoMA PS1, Tate Britain, Moderna Museet, Tate Liverpool, and Frieze Projects. Despite this résumé, Nelson rarely appears at auction; his presence is almost exclusively in the UK. A 2001 Guardian article questioned whether his work was 'too weird' for British art, but time proved otherwise. His market presence relies on art fairs: the series Cloak of rags was shown at Art Dubai, and at Art Basel in 2017, Galleria Franco Noero offered works from the same series priced between £15,000 and £100,000. That year, Nelson also appeared at the 303 Gallery booth and at Art Basel Miami Beach with Berlin's neugerriemschneider gallery.