Sublime salvage

There was a moment more than 20 years ago when Bankside Power Station was derelict but its transformation into Tate Modern had not yet begun. I remember thinking, on a visit to the site, how beautiful and impressive the huge rusting generators looked — like enormous real-life sculptures by Anthony Caro. Nothing that has since been exhibited in what came to be called the Turbine Hall has looked quite so strong.

A quarter of a century later, the artist Mike Nelson has reversed the process — not at Tate Modern, but at Tate Britain where he has filled the Duveen Galleries with massive pieces of redundant machinery: cement mixers, engine blocks, metal filing cabinets, drill bits, racks, scaffolding and pallets of rough, functional wood. You enter through battered swing doors salvaged from a hospital. It all looks just as powerful — perhaps more so — than the pieces of sculpture that are usually displayed in these chilly, neoclassical spaces.