Mike Nelson: The Book of Spells review – a monument to lockdown loneliness

Matt’s Gallery, London
In a claustrophobic installation, Nelson slams us in the face with the way we’ve been living with this howl of despair from the heart of the pandemic

Some lockdown art is inspiring. Mike Nelson’s The Book of Spells, (A Speculative Fiction) is not. Only one person at a time can experience this tiny installation. As the gallerist shuts the door from the outside – was that a key turning? – you are left all alone in a monument to loneliness. The protagonist of this fabulist installation lives in a single room with barely enough space for the iron bed frame on which they apparently spent month after month. A window opens on to a sealed space full of rubble. A child’s forgotten ball sums up the apocalyptic wasteland out there. And in here, the only signs of physical sustenance are a dried squash, an animal bone and a jar of matter that might be seeds or poison. Otherwise the small cupboard is bare.

What has the occupant of the room been living on? Dreams of travel. The prison-like bed is surrounded by roughly knocked together wooden bookcases loaded with copies of Rough Guides and Lonely Planets – hundreds of them – plus maps and the occasional Dorling Kindersley volume, the ones that have nice colour pictures of beaches, artworks and local dishes. These are all practical guidebooks, the kind that so many of us stuffed in our hand luggage on the budget flights that made globetrotting so popular up to early 2020.

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