Nathaniel Mellors

The Collective proudly presents Hateball, a solo exhibition by London-based artist Nathaniel Mellors. Commissioned by the Collective, the installation will feature a new sequence of film, video and sculptural works.

In Hateball, Mellors presents a tokenistic ‘global view’; an East versus West structure in which the different representative works compete with and undermine each other’s positions. The idea of abstraction as a potentially threatening force permeates this exhibition.

In the centre, the idea of political struggle is invoked through a party-political broadcast by ‘MACGOOHANSOC’, in which a 7-foot tall woman claims to be possessed by the spirit of Patrick McGoohan, and spouts a semi-fascistic dictum. The film is informed by McGoohan’s highly original 1967 T.V. series ‘The Prisoner’, but has taken on its own mutant purpose.

Entering to witness the dying thoughts of a Polish supercomputer (BrainOne), and finishing with a re-staging of the final scene from Sylvester Stallone’s original Rambo movie ‘First Blood’, Hateball further elaborates Mellors’ own brand of constructive misanthropy and offers up a vivid, idiosyncratic exploration of contemporary art’s capacity for social and political content.

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Nathaniel Mellors: Hateball