The Sight of Something: Glenn Brown and Mathew Weir: Freud Museum, London

Taking their cue from Sigmund Freud's observation in ‘Medusa’s Head’ (1922) that childhood terrors can be triggered by ‘the sight of , British artists Glenn Brown and Mathew Weir explore the rich ambiguity of this phrase through a selection of drawings, paintings and sculptures in dialogue with objects and artefacts throughout the Freud Museum. 

A central theme of this project is mark making, most evident in drawing and the inscription of lines, which is connected to psychoanalysis through the act of uncovering and creating traces of the past. For Freud, memory traces are not direct copies of past events, but rather distorted and reconstructed versions of them. Similarly, mark making can be seen as a process of tracing over forgotten or repressed memories, where the act of drawing becomes a means of grappling with and revealing these hidden or altered experiences.

Drawing is central to both Brown and Weir’s practices, each creating complex, ambiguous visual spaces that often draw on art historical references. In Brown’s work, images appear and disappear, shifting between multiple perspectives. Faces and body parts merge, becoming both sexualised and visually playful. This resonates closely not only with the psychoanalytic emphasis on the hidden and the sexual, but with Freud's exploration of dualism and his fascination with two-faced figures. Weir's work similarly engages with the play of the seen and unseen, as well as the relationship between pain and creativity. Some drawings are made with the artist’s own blood, embodying the tension between creation and destruction inherent in the act of making images themselves.

Both Brown and Weir invite the viewer to think twice about the image—to revise and reinterpret, to question and rethink what they imagine they see—thus echoing the very process of analysis, which challenges what is often taken for granted or left unexamined. The Sight of Something shows how visual phenomena can immerse us into the complexities of human experience, drawing us into visual worlds that prompt this kind of introspection. These images are never immediately unequivocal; instead, they always confront the complex processes of remembering and forgetting.

A catalogue will accompany the exhibition with contributions from Darian Leader and Vanessa Boni.

Glenn Brown (born 1966 in Hexham) is a British artist known for the use of art historical references in his paintings. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Centre d'Art Contemporain, France (2000); Serpentine Gallery, London (2004); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2008); Tate Liverpool, England (2009), which travelled to the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin and Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2013); Rennie Collection, Vancouver (2013); Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles (2016); Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2016), Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2016), Rembrandt House, Amsterdam (2017),  Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence (2017), Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK (2018), British Museum, London (2018) and Sprengel Museum and Landesmuseum, Hanover, Germany (2023).

Mathew Weir (born 1977 in Ipswich) lives and works in London. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2004 and has exhibited internationally. His most recent exhibitions include - The Beast at the End of the Rope (solo exhibition), Knust Kunz, Munich. Miscellaneous fact: a hypothesis in 26 letters, 5 equations and no answer (English translation) with Abigail Lane (curated by Nicolas Surlapierre and Vincent Lavoie) MAC VAL - Museum of Contemporary Art of Val-de-Marne, Paris. Death and the Devil - The Fascination with Horror (curated by Westrey Page) Kunstpalast Düsseldorf. Exhibition tour to Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt and Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt.