“Weight of Matter”. Monika Sosnowska’s First Solo Exhibition in London
18 sculptures created over the past two decades, alongside dozens of models that rarely leave the artist’s private studio, are brought together in “Weight of Matter”. Monika Sosnowska’s first solo exhibition in London, opened to the public on 10 September at South London Gallery, marks the largest presentation of her work in the United Kingdom to date. It brings together some of the artist’s best-known pieces, including large-scale, deconstructed steel and concrete forms inspired by Warsaw’s modernist architecture, as well as rarely exhibited models offering an insight into their making.
Matter from Behind the Iron Curtain
Monika Sosnowska’s artistic practice has long occupied the boundary between sculpture and installation, focusing on architecture and space and their physical manifestations. Her primary source of inspiration and field of artistic exploration remains the legacy of post-war modernism, particularly the architecture of Warsaw from the 1960s and 1970s.
Sosnowska is interested both in space experienced on an individual, micro scale – such as the interiors of rooms, corridors and stairwells – and on a macro scale, encompassing entire urban developments and city environments. From the perspective proposed by the artist, architecture emerges as a system primarily concerned with organising and imposing order; as a reflection of socio-political systems, it directly shapes people’s everyday lives.
The artist draws extensively on the aesthetics of the socialist era, which formed the backdrop to her childhood and adolescence. Her “architectural installations” incorporate familiar elements of the landscape of communist-era Poland, from prefabricated housing estates and institutional buildings to two-tone painted walls, handrails covered with red PVC strips, steel rods and concrete blocks. Her deconstructed sculptures deliberately unsettle the viewer’s sense of order and reality, introducing an element of chaos and uncertainty. The distorted objects often play with scale and perception, while their geometry heightens a sense of disorientation, even surrealism: corridors turn into labyrinths, rooms reveal their claustrophobic confinement, and fractured industrial structures evoke a stark, post-apocalyptic landscape populated by enigmatic, biomorphic skeletal forms.
The Largest Presentation of Sosnowska’s Work in the United Kingdom to Date
South London Gallery brings together 18 of Monika Sosnowska’s sculptures, offering an opportunity to trace the development of her artistic language over the past 20 years. It is the artist’s first solo exhibition in London and the largest presentation of her work to date in the United Kingdom.
The exhibition unfolds across the historic, 19th-century interiors of the 135-year-old gallery, creating an entirely new context for the Polish sculptor’s work. In the Victorian setting of the Main Gallery, visitors encounter a monumental site-specific installation comprising a group of works that have never before been shown together. Some weigh more than half a tonne. Suspended from the rafters like animal carcasses, the skeletal forms appear to test the structure of the building itself.
Meanwhile, across two floors of the post-industrial Fire Station building, the exhibition design allows Sosnowska’s works to enter into direct dialogue with the gallery’s architecture. In the former fire engine hall, a sculpture resembling a black metal staircase enters into a clear dialogue with the building’s white staircase, designed by 6a architects and inspired by the form of an emergency escape stairwell. In an adjacent gallery overlooking the greenery outside, a composition of sculptures with plant-like forms creates a concrete garden of collapsing trees and branches made from reinforcing steel bars. On the upper floor, in rooms once occupied by firefighters, painted steel works evoking crumpled paper and peeling walls echo the building’s run-down state before its conversion into an exhibition space.
Although Monika Sosnowska is best known for working with industrial materials and creating large-scale objects, she develops her ideas through the making of precise paper models. These maquettes rarely leave the artist’s studio and will be shown to the London public for the first time. The miniature-scale models reflect the traditional process of designing architectural forms, revealing another fascinating dimension of Sosnowska’s artistic practice.
Weight of Matter
Location: South London Gallery, London, UK
Exhibition opening: 10.09.2026
Exhibition dates: 10.09–22.11.2026
Organiser: South London Gallery
Partner: Adam Mickiewicz Institute
More information:
https://www.southlondongallery.org/exhibitions/monika-sosnowska-weight-of-matter/
The exhibition is supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM) brings Polish culture to people around the world. Being a state institution, it creates lasting interest in Polish culture and art through strengthening the presence of Polish artists on the global stage. It initiates innovative projects, supports international cooperation and cultural exchanges. It promotes the work of both established and promising artists, showing the diversity and richness of our culture. The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is also responsible for the Culture.pl website, a comprehensive source of knowledge about Polish culture. More information: https://iam.pl/en
Media contact:
Bartłomiej Jankowski
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