Known for his atmospheric, immersive installations British artist Mike Nelson (b. 1967) transforms the gallery with sculptures drawn from the V-A-C collection.

The space, with a rough wooden floor and mass of modelled figures, is suggestive of an artist’s studio, but it is filled with sculptures of the body by some of the 20th century’s greatest artists.

Displayed on this common ground, Constantin Brancusi’s The First Cry (1917) dissolves the human form into elliptical shapes, and Alberto Giacometti’s Femme Debout (1957) elongates a woman’s body into abstraction. While contemporary artist Pawel Althamer’s depiction of three figures around a campfire becomes a focal point around which the other sculptures – by artists including Petr Galadzhev and Anatoly Osmolovsky - seem to be gathered.
The display highlights the V-A-C collection, Moscow, as part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s programme of opening up rarely seen collections from around the world.