Tate Britain Commission: Heather Phillipson, review: a dazzling, otherworldly vision of mankind

What are you looking at? At Tate Britain, on bright screens in a dusky space, close-ups of at least a dozen inhuman eyes stare straight at you. Here’s a watchful tiger. There, a snow monkey, slowly blinking. And that must be a chameleon, flicking a swollen, purple tongue across its socket. It feels unsettling, being eyeballed like this, as though you’re prey within the jungle.

This is the first scene in Heather Phillipson’s stonking new multimedia installation, the latest annual commission to fill the long, neoclassical Duveen Galleries. And it’s wild: a grand, ecstatic drama, ranking among the most ambitious and imaginative pieces of contemporary art, which tells, via strange, poetic scenarios and images, the epic story of mankind’s vexed relationship with the natural world.

The work, enigmatically titled “RUPTURE NO. 1: blowtorching the bitten peach”, is divided into three parts, each a distinct world or zone defined by its own palette and soundscape. Passing between them feels like voyaging through space and time.

First, bathed in orange light, is that primeval landscape, where our ancestors roamed beside wild beasts. At the threshold, a pair of colossal forms, like carnivorous plants from the era of the dinosaurs, but fashioned from scraps of salvaged machinery (or are they torpedoes?), evoke architectural elements from an ancient Egyptian temple: civilisation’s stirrings.

The animals’ eyes appear on screens emerging from piles of salt on a bed of red sand with the footprint of a buried longship: Noah’s Ark. Speakers attached to thick nautical cables play an eerie soundtrack of the creatures’ calls and cries, like audio ripped from David Attenborough’s latest extravaganza. Himalayan salt lamps, cradled within rope nets, also hang within the half-light, like molten lumps of volcanic material, while backcloths, by a professional scenic painter, depict swirling orange clouds, like apocalyptic John Martin skies.

Oh, and, looming over everything, a gigantic papier-maché ram surveys the scene. Gulp: what ancient, terrible god is this, swaddled in newsprint, with animated vortices for eyes?

Actually, at close quarters, he’s rather cuddly: a big softie, not a brute. Through his legs we go, as though entering another Egyptian portal, or navigating a sculpture by Niki de Saint Phalle, before arriving at scene two: four horned buffalo lapping at a watering hole. Except these beasts are scuffed old bowsers, the pond a paddling pool filled with oil. On the liquid’s glossy surface, ghostly projected footage flickers, of whiskery otters. Above, flying, coffin-shaped boats catch loudspeakers in fishing nets. This is, perhaps, the present: a rapacious age of industry, suffering an unquenchable thirst.

Then, it’s on to a third world: a frozen, post-apocalyptic waste, as blue as a glacier, and beset by howling gusts, where massive, menacing scrap-metal insects buzz about above our heads. Slowly, we approach a dilapidated, corrugated structure at the far end, like a mountain refuge or Antarctic base, flanked by wind turbines, foil space blankets, and sped-up footage, on another screen, of ultraviolet caterpillars going crazy. Inside, a swaying mobile of orange gas canisters emits mournful metallic notes, like a large wind-chime or set of Buddhist bells.

Have we stumbled across a ramshackle temple, or sweat lodge, from the derelict future? Certainly, the rush of emotion, as you peer into its peculiarly cosy, homespun interior, is pure, even spiritual: blessed relief at, finally, chancing upon a safe harbour from the cosmic storm that’s raging after the end of the world. I will remember this place, treasure it. Because, it reminds us, we, as a species, will survive. Behind the shack, there’s a beautiful, soothing coda: mesmeric footage, projected on a huge screen, of a luminous orb in the form of a fiery peach, gently rising and setting above the sea. Peace, after the tempest.

So, what does it all mean? Frankly, it would be foolish to try and impose a single, simple-to-comprehend narrative – though, clearly, this is a work about humanity’s hubris, and the imminence of ecological catastrophe. As well as an artist, Phillipson, who describes her works as “quantum thought-experiments”, is a poet. Drawn to stuff that baffles her, she seeks, she says, to “cultivate strangeness”. Everything, here, is mysterious and suggestive, reverberating in our subconscious. She’s also a musician, and, while sound is essential to the overall effect, an innate understanding of tempo and rhythm is evident in the way she orchestrates imagery, too.

Personally, I wasn’t a fan of her temporary sculpture for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, a precarious dollop of whipped cream with a cherry on top, beset by a fly, which is still there, streaked by rain, now looking rather sorry for itself. No, Phillipson is at her best when she takes over an entire space, controlling every detail like an impresario, plunging her audience into blazing imaginative worlds. She is a maximalist, elegantly fusing things together in the tradition of Robert Rauschenberg, intermingling pessimism with levity, so that the tone is never overblown. Only one word does justice to a creative endeavour this otherworldly and impressive: bravo.

From Mon May 17 until Jan 23; information: tate.org.uk