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Life carries weight – and as we dive deeper into our phones, endlessly scrolling through the reels of idealised living, it becomes easier to push the heavier, messier parts of existence out of sight.
Against the ever-shifting surface-level pressures of modern life that we’ve all come to know, ‘The Weight of Being’ at Two Temple Place in London takes an ontological peek into what’s largely remained unchanged – a continual attempt to make sense of life’s quiet weight – the good, the bad, and all the shades in between.
John McCracken, Man in the Pub, date unknown
(Image credit: Estate of the artist, Hartlepool Borough Council)
Set against a grandiose backdrop of Neo-Tudor architecture, the show presents a medley of sculpture, photography, film and painting. Shedding light on vulnerability, the struggles of mental health, and acts of resilience. Open until 19 April 2026, the exhibition brings together 68 artists, spanning from the 20th century to the present day. There are works from acclaimed artists such as Lubaina Himid and Paula Rego, as well as lesser-known talents such as John Wilson McCracken.
Entering the exhibition space, the weight of the everyday is presented in full colour. Johannah Churchhill’s photography reveals the heavy toll of work, with arresting portraits showing the harsh realities of NHS healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, questions of class, community and identity present an image of a world in flux as Simon Bartram’s painting, Man of the North Sea, conveys a deep soul-searching within masculinity. Depicting, in painstaking detail, the restless notion of male identity in a post-industrial environment. Similarly, Rohan Patel’s series Where are you Really From? contemplates an identity of dual heritage caught between the margins of race and class – projecting his own precarity of belonging onto the landscape through solitary silhouettes.
George Harding, Alignment, 2011
(Image credit: Courtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind)
Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, joy and humour surface throughout. Works such as Muta & Moretta by Rosie Gibbens open the door to the peculiar world of retrofuturist fembots, delivering a witty critique on how women’s bodies are reshaped for fantasy and control.
Capturing moments of warmth and levity, John Wilson McCracken’s tender painting of his long-term friend and mentor, Lucien Freud, fast asleep on a sofa, quietly dispels the image of the towering figure of the art establishment, replacing it with something softer and more intimate.
In celebration of natural and imagined landscapes, Birdsong by Lumina Hamid sits at the crux of a kinship with nature, reflecting on how the collective solitude imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic drew attention to the simple things, like birdsong – an intimate but shared experience.
Frankie Mills, Kitchen. Olena & Paulina Bilokrenytska pictured in their sponsor’s kitchen in Ivybridge, Devon, January 2023
(Image credit: 2023, photograph. ©Frankie Mills. Courtesy of the Artist)
While ‘The Weight of Being’ doesn’t promise answers or easy solutions, it instead offers something more nuanced – permission to linger with discomfort and recognise resilience. Marking how art has always been a tool for carving out individual and collective freedoms. As curator Angela Thomas remarks, ‘we do not pretend that art can cure, fix, or neatly resolve, but it can invite us to sit with vulnerability and hope, and to see how they coexist’.
‘The Weight of Being’ at Two Temple Place, London until 19 April 2026, twotempleplace.org
Simon Bartram, North Sea Man
(Image credit: Courtesy of Simon Bartram)
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