Mike Nelson in his new sensory research, wiping objects and simulating reality

Culture looks pretty bleak right now – with economic, social, political and environmental turmoil – but it provides plenty of fuel for inspiration, if British installation artist Mike Nelson’s new show is anything to go by. Aptly (and forebodingly) titled Extinction Beckons, the survey marks Nelson’s first and largest body of work, featuring pieces dating back to the 1980s.

It is an amalgamation of objects scavenged from the depths of junkyards and flea markets, which through their presentation serve to preserve fragmented moments with enough room for open-ended interpretation.

Although the name of the research predicts and prophesies a doomed global future, its content is rooted in fantasy, touching the boundaries of reality and conjuring up the ghosts of nostalgia.

But the show alludes to the process and practice of art, the cyclical nature of craft, creating ideas and creating an exhibition together. Like the unsettled communities implicit in his work, there is a sense of inevitability with the passage of time and treading familiar ground.

“I make new works out of old works,” says Nelson, referring to how he literally recycles materials between collections – using over 5,000 meters of reclaimed wood and over 50 tonnes of sand to dramatically transform the Hayward Gallery.

The show opens in a red-lit storage unit that is not immediately noticeable and yet reminds visitors of how its contents first arrived on site and how they will be packed and stored after the show closes. Likewise, the final room marks this process with the complete reconstruction of Nelson’s 2003 studio, an invitation to consider the evolution of the show’s concept and its development to final execution.

It’s an immersive collection – allowing visitors to move freely between installations and interact as they see fit. There is a maze-like ship that deliberately manages to confuse and disorient those present, presenting distorted realities and spaces that are deliberately misaligned, while referencing people’s forced movement and change through their chaotically furnished but recognizable environments. They are strange worlds to walk in and look at.

Nelson worked incredibly closely with the curators to assemble the objects in a particular order, and yet there isn’t much direction or guidance for visitors to lean on. In this sense, it is a sensual performance, requiring visitors to wander through the rooms, feel their associations with these objects and consider the people they were once associated with.

It’s equal parts eerie and dangerous, with large-scale activations that feel incredibly timely. However, there is not much signage throughout the exhibition, allowing Nelson to shift the burden of meaning onto the viewer and remove himself from commentary.

Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery, says, “The lack of curation allows the viewer to become the artist as they form their own narrative as they wander the space.”

He adds, “Mike Nelson’s installations are ‘interactive’ in the best sense: through powerful arrangements of culturally and psychologically charged props and architectural structures, they prompt each viewer to imagine a story that makes sense of the scene before them. The installations sometimes physically enclose us, their open-ended narratives evoking a seemingly endless game of possibilities – even as they create bleak scenarios that suggest the fringes and fringes of society.”

Combining fiction with politics and presenting multiple stories, Nelson plays in a fictional space, allowing viewers to participate in the exhibition and not be sure of what they have seen, but feel affected by its content and bear the burden of long after the visit.

As Nelson, who is intuitively guided in his creations, concludes: “I avoided using the term retrospective because research shows that the work continues and progresses.”