Mike Nelson: M62 (East, West)

M62 (East, West) (2025) is a new commission by British artist Mike Nelson which forms the latest edition of a serial work that utilises blown-out tyres gathered from major road systems of cities across the world.

The series began in 2013 with M6, titled after the motorway which passes through Birmingham, and was followed by A7 (Route du Soleil) in Lyon, France (2015), A52 in Düsseldorf, Germany (2017) and M25 in London (2023). Each work is different in its formal language, but the primary material — blown-out tyres — stays superficially the same.

Part of the point of these works is that each tyre, whether whole or in fragments, is unique. Not one of them is the same, although each one shares the same history of its manufacture, and each has gone through a violent — and creative — process of demise as a functional object.

For Leeds Art Gallery, Nelson took the nearby M62 as his point of focus with its east to west axis. Two works have been created that although different, appear the same. These two doppelgängers encourage close study – similar to a game of ‘spot the difference’. This act of looking encourages us to focus on the tyres — utilitarian objects that would normally be passed without scrutiny. To accentuate this sense of doubling, two sections of motorway barrier have been incorporated and mounted onto a concrete platform with a chamfered edge, recalling the central reservation of road systems. M62 (East) and M62 (West) have been conceived to be viewed together or presented in separate galleries, invoking a sense of déjà vu.

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society through a special partnership with the Henry Moore Foundation, supported by Cathy Wills, 2023/24