Monday 8 September 2008

The Wellcome Collection


Anagram (detail), 2005 by Julie Cockburn, (British). Mixed Media. Commissioned by the Wellcome Trust. Julie Cockburn produced this work as her response to the history of the Human Genome Project. It is based on a colour chart, used by designers to explore all the tones available to them. Cockburn has used these basic building blocks as a substrate for the building blocks of life: The As, Cs, Gs and Ts that make up human genome sequence. Like the replication machinery of the human cell, she has also thrown in some mistakes, words such as Joy and Heaven, reminding us that this data has more than an abstract existence: it is human.
I finally went to the Wellcome collection this weekend, our main reason for the visit was the exhibition of skeletons. Daisy wants to be a Pathologist so I thought it would interest her to see some real bones with their history attached. The exhibition was fascinating as were the other galleries. I had no idea they were so large. I particularly liked the Medicine Now which featured a range of contemporary artists responses to various medical issues including Malaria. One brilliant piece of work was an outline map of the world made up of squished mosquitoes! At the end the public was invited to make a visual response to a topic covered in the exhibition. Daisy was very quick to produce a lovely illustration of someone holding their breath. She explained that she had learnt that week that oxygen ages us, so the very thing that keeps us alive is what makes us grow old.
I on the other hand, am incapable of imaginatively doing anything other than colour, and the felt tips were horrible, so I drew a spiral of ZZZZ's to represent sleep, something that obsesses me 24/7. The whole back wall contains the illustrations drawn by visitors, some of them were fantastic. Well worth a visit.
After, we went to the Kings Road to worship at the temple of Tabio, I did try to find the coat I liked in Whistles but no size 16's to be found. I tried on 5 in Zara, none fitted as Daisy pointed out if she had to buy a size L (and she is a petite 12) then what hope is there for a chunky monkey like me!

1 comment:

La Belette Rouge said...

Sounds like a great show. I am somewhat profound-asized( forgive the made up word) by the paradoxical nature of human nature. "the very thing that keeps us alive is what makes us grow old." It is amazing, isn't it?