In an exchange of artistic vocabularies, ‘WEIGHT’ brings together a new suite of paintings by Marcus Nelson and a debut film and sound piece by Magnus Westwell. Uniting their independent vernaculars of dance and painting, a dialogue of diverse artistic experience coalesces in a singular installation in which representations of the self come to multiply.

Rhythmic movement and repetitive forms construct the multifaceted landscape in which this installation sits. Percolating amongst the dual mediums, the individual becomes the plural in a group submerged by hypnotic influence. Forming a continuous wave of movement, free-flowing corporeal forms expand and pulsate, dissolving into one unified organism, blurring the boundaries between paint and moving image. This dissolvement illustrates the body's duality as both a personal site of expression and a conduit for shared experience and emotion. In Westwell and Nelson’s work, the body becomes a medium for nonverbal communication, translating complex internal states into tangible movement.

For Westwell, absence and liminality are embodied in visceral crowd choreography and regenerative motion, where individual and collective tensions collide. And Then Gone (2025) evokes a perpetual flux of existence - fractured, entwined, and endlessly looping. Westwell’s ensemble of dancers surge through shifting synchronies, their bodies caught between order and unraveling, precision and abandon. In this, the unconscious mind surfaces, revealing a delicate tension between autonomy and belonging, fragility and force. The score, resonating throughout the gallery, holds stillness and weight in balance, unfolding in layers of orchestral ambience and fragmented decay. This work is a pivotal moment in Westwell’s practice, born from an ongoing dialogue between movement and sound, where choreography and composition merge and evolve - reflecting cycles of memory, time, and transcendence within an ephemeral, fleeting landscape.

Reflecting these ideas, Nelson’s large-scale paintings – Crowd (2025) – disrupt the body and its subsequent movement into rhythmic bars, breaking the format of the composition into smaller panels, which can be rearranged into new sequences by the audience. By inviting the spectator to become an active part of the work, Nelson opens a dialogue around autonomous movement and the authoritative modes external influence can have over our psyche, referencing crowd dynamics. Reinforcing this, his loose application of paint represents the psychological dissolution of the self: figures, no longer distinct or isolated, fall into one another, reflecting how individual identity can become blurred amongst collective forces. In a direct exploration of performance, the compositional arrangements in Nelson’s quadriptych are inspired by Westwell’s choreography. Reinterpreting the varying shapes produced by the dancers, Nelson uses his own body as a medium to explore ideas of self-representation, offering a fluid and non-linear way to communicate internal experiences, emotions, and perceptions of identity. Loops of movement, multiplicity and sound echo throughout this exhibition, changing hands and shifting between artist, audience, dancer and painter. Set within a dark void, both artists's shared interest in theatrical scenery is reinforced by their mutual treatment of light. With all figures emerging from the darkness, limbs are illuminated by subtle lustres and cast shadows amongst the dense figurative landscape, where the audience, too, becomes part of the crowd.

With thanks to Sunken Lane

Marcus Nelson is a British painter who lives and works in Berlin, Germany. In 2017, Nelson completed his diploma in Fine Art at Kingston School of Art and went on to complete his undergraduate degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2021. Solo exhibitions and public installations include: ‘Fools Are Everywhere’, Passage, Berlin, DE (2024); ‘Urban Theatre’, Ventana Project, Berlin, DE (2024); ‘Lost Boys’, Eve Leibe Gallery, London, UK (2022); ‘Scar Tissue’, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation Archway, London, UK (2021); ‘Speaking in Tongues’, National Gallery, London, UK (2019). Museum and Group exhibtions incude: ‘A Tragedy in Three Acts’ with Tim Plamper, GROVE, Berlin, DE (2023); ’New Now (Part 1)’, Guts Gallery, London, UK (2023); ‘The Other Side of Paradise’, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation Marylebone, London, UK (2023); ‘Hiraeth’, Phillips, Online Exhibition (2022); ‘Behind the Glass’, Boys Don’t Cry UK in collaboration with the Central Saint Martins Museum and Study Collection, London, UK (2021); ‘After Hours’, Harlesden High Street, Southside Wandsworth, London, UK (2020). Residencies include: PLOP Residency, London, UK (2023); Spread Museum, Entrevaux, FR (2022); The Fores Project, London, UK (2020).

Magnus Westwell is a Scottish artist, director and multi-instrumentalist working with choreography, composition and performance. Spanning the euphoric and desolate, Westwell’s work seeks to understand and express ineffable emotional states, transcending fragility, intimacy and catharsis in movement and sound. Exploring cycles of liminality, transcendence and absence, Westwell works within ethereal, dream-like worlds, where decaying and generative processes aim to challenge the limits of emotional and physical experience, researching ideas surrounding memory, consciousness, ephemerality, time and loss. Magnus Westwell is a Sadler’s Wells Young Associate alumni, and their work has reached a diversity of venues, institutions and festivals across Europe and the UK, including Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, Britten Pears Arts, London Short Film Festival, Cafe OTO and Amsterdam Dance Event. Their digital work has been published and premiered across Nowness, Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage and FACT Magazine. Westwell performed in Virgil Abloh’s SS22 Louis Vuitton collection campaign; featured in Marianna Simnett’s WINNER, exhibited at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin; and performed with Scratchproof Orchestra at Turner Contemporary for the closing of Mark Leckey’s In The Offing. Westwell’s Broken Light Of My Heart (2023) was described by Emma Warren as “radical, momentous, thrilling and exceptionally moving”. Westwell has collaborated with BULLYACHE, composing and performing string arrangements for their live performances at Bold Tendencies, Barbican and Abbey Road Studios. Westwell was Artist in Residence at Britten Pears Arts and The Mandrake Hotel, and was recently commissioned by Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art to create a performance work in response to their exhibition by GALLI.

Brooke Wilson is a curator and writer based in Berlin, Germany. Wilson completed her undergraduate degree at Central Saint Martins, earning a first-class BA in Fine Art and completed a Master’s in Writing at the Royal College of Art in 2023. She has curated a number of exhibitions in various site-specific, white cube and institutional settings, including; EIGEN + ART Lab, Berlin; Cob Gallery, London; Harlesden High Street, London; The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London and the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection, London. In addition to curation, her writing has been published in print and online by a variety of publications, including; frieze, émergent Magazine; DATEAGLE ART and Curatorial Affairs.

Sunken Lane is an artist-led production company, offering case-by-case support to first-time directors who come to filmmaking from other artistic backgrounds. 'And Then Gone' is the first in a series of short-form projects from the company, produced by Cameron Makin, Seb Brindle, and Victoria Couri.

‘WEIGHT’ opens Friday 21 March from 17:00-21:00. The exhibition will run until 13 April and is open Saturday and Sunday, from 14:00-18:00 or by appointment.

For more information or any press enquiries please contact Brooke Wilson; brookewilsonstudio@gmail.com