wellcome collection

With nothing much planned for Saturday, Mitch and I made a somewhat spontaneous decision to visit the Wellcome Collection in Euston. The museum is all about medicine but particularly its links to life and art.

After a muffin (a very delicious apple and courgette muffin, that was huge) and a coffee in their lovely cafe - how about that ceiling! - we headed up to the fifth floor, home to their current exhibition: Foreign Bodies, Common Ground. Six different artists spent a few months in different research centres across the world and the exhibition showcased the work they created in response to their experiences.

My favourite piece was the 'Fossil Necklace' by Katie Paterson. It was made from 170 fossils, all cut and smoothed to form tiny bead-like spheres. Once linked together, the necklace, very cleverly, appeared to chart the development of the Earth. The first beads/fossils were billions of years old whilst the last few represented the time when humans were being to evolve. Apart from the whole concept of the necklace, I also v.much liked how it was displayed: hung up in a dark room with only one light, visitors (only four at a time) were given a magnifying glass with which to take a closer look at the individual fossil spheres - yes one of them was made of amber and contained a bee! Outside the room there was a 2-D layout of the necklace with annotations so you could read what each one was. Included in the fossils was the ear bone of a whale and some fossilised dinosaur poo! Pretty cool eh?

Picture source 1 & 2, 3.

They kinda remind me of teeny tiny planets and moons in that last pic.

Another of the exhibits that caught our eye was the Pata Picha Studio created by artists Miriam Syowia Kyambi and James Muiuki. Their aim was to highlight the connection between researchers and the community involved, how they depend and perceive one another. The studio was built in Kilifi, Kenya and local residents were asked to pose using the props provided. They'd recreated the set in the exhibition so Mitch and I had a go too :)

We decided to take a quick look at the permanent collection, Medicine Now, before having a good peruse of the shop. 

I'd highly recommend the Wellcome Collection - it's a great little place that sells the cutest cuddly cells (that's athlete's foot I'm holding) and, unlike a lot of the other free museums in London, it wasn't crowded in the slightest. Oh and it has a cracking tagline.

Any (free) London gems  you'd care to share?