By Beth Cockerline CAPetc YR2. 1st publised by FAD magazine 14th Aug 2025
Entropy
/ˈɛntrəpi/
Noun
1. a measurement of the energy in a system or process that is not available to do work 1
2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
“The crucial thing about entropy- it always increases over time. It is the natural tendency of things to lose order. Left to its own devices, life will always become less structured. Sandcastles get washed away. Weeds overtake gardens” 2
In this unprecedented time of change and turmoil perhaps we need to embrace entropy? Perhaps we need to pause and let things be washed away, slow down and let the weeds take over? Synonymous with immersive installations, Mike Nelson recently spent two months in homage to this decay; in an act of service and love to the entropy of a block of South London flats. In a “reverse DIY”3 feat, Nelson has created a hauntingly familiar work, Humpty Dumpty, a transient history of Mardin earthworks, low rise, at Fruitmarket gallery in Edinburgh. The exhibit, which coincides with Edinburgh Arts Festival, then comes full circle and counters with the inquisitive exploration of the rebirth of a South-Eastern Turkish city, Mardin.
If you grew up in the 70s-90s, in a British council house, Low Tide is akin to attending the funeral of a former life. I’d suggest you start your journey here, in the upper gallery and Warehouse, where Nelson sensitively captures the gritty detail with nostalgic reminiscence, of the now extinct, Heygate Estate, through photography, sculpture and installation.
Life-size documentation, come sculptures, dominate the upper gallery. Interior and exterior scenes ubiquitous to run-down, concrete housing estates around the country are showcased and transformed into 3D works with Nelson’s scavenged and reused materials- providing a rich textural language of his own work alongside patinaed architectural features. Incongruous 80s arcade machines also form parts of these sculptures, the technology and aesthetic of these pieces not quite matching the decaying beauty of the wooden beams or the flaking deterioration of salvaged metal but a genre marker of an era none-the-less.
The scale of these works (printed on a machine, specifically sourced from the same era as the building) give them transportive powers. I feel like I could walk up the well-worn stairs, I almost feel the threadbare carpet underfoot, the invasive presence of beige- the tiles, the carpets, the wallpaper, the curtains- feels so recognisable I can almost hear the hiss of the open grill in my mum’s kitchen. I smell and could reach out to her infamous chip pan entombed in grease. Stepping into Nelson’s work is like inhabiting a memory and I am flooded with flashbacks of pink velour pyjamas and anaglypta wallpaper.
There is also a distinct evocation of wistfulness in this work. Stairs are embellished with festoons of work lights and torn lanterns from bygone celebrations. They are littered with evidence of lives lived: crisp packets, frayed t-shirts, chipped paintwork, fag-ends and mould. The guts have been ripped out and homes have been left to slowly die.
Continuing this mournful trip through Nelson’s exterior photos, the audience are invited to trespass through scrapyards of rusting hubcaps and abandoned garages. Ironic graffiti claiming this failed utopia as ‘Home Sweet Home’ jostles with the palpable coldness of the giant textured slabs used to hastily construct the tower blocks. We see behind the scenes of the concrete- in excavations of pipes and clipped electrical cables and the monstrous claw of a digger making way for ‘progress’.
If these photos don’t help you inhabit council houses of the 70s, just make your way down to the warehouse where you can physically enter a scale replica of one of the flats Nelson visited. Despite it being a replica in shape and size Nelson has cobbled together this building and it’s contents from all corners of the earth. Suggesting perhaps that decay and entropy are a universal experience? Or just embracing the beauty and texture of found materials?
Apprehensively, I enter through an ominous metal security door (from New York), scrawled with graffiti tags, which creaks and then slams behind me. Instantly, I leave the gallery, and I am consumed by contrary feelings of both home and anxiety. The bones of the place creak as I explore the crumbling façade and damp innards of this building steeped in an melancholic fragility- it feels as if it could disintegrate at any moment. An unfettered harsh light from a bare-bulb and the flicker of a strip light highlight the Matrix-type glitch of this construction, of a construction, within a construction and expose a bookshelf cleared of life but layered in grime.
The shuffle of my feet on barren floorboards is the only sound in this seemingly deserted place which only serves to underline the feeling that I shouldn’t be here. I am witnessing something I shouldn’t, and it is both thrilling and terrifying.
The chipboard walls and chipped doors are laced with roses of mould, and the proverbial stench of damp concrete is pervasive as I try to readjust my vision to the darkness lingering through the kitchen window (from Nelson’s own house I’m told). An expansive building site of rubble and abandoned builder’s buckets surrounds the
About the author: Beth Cockerline is about to start the 2nd year of the HND Contemporary Art Practice at Edinburgh College. Edinburgh based writer, artist and teacher with a penchant for gender equality, feminism and promoting the rights of marginalised groups. Beth is also a member of the amazing hubCAP gallery in Granton.
