Medicine Now

This exhibition at the Wellcome Collection contains a range of artistic responses to the themes The body, Genomes, Malaria and Obesity. As a biologist who also produces artworks I found the exhibition fascinating. One piece I particularly enjoyed was Origin a DVD by Daniel Lee. In it, a fish like a coelacanth is gradually transformed into a man, but it is done so subtly you can hardly see the changes as they occur. I also thought Julie Cockburn’s Anagram was effective. Based on the Human Genome Project she has taken a paint colour chart and cut out the DNA base letters from it to form groups of words. I found Andrea Duncan’s piece, 23 pairs, amusing. She has used 23 pairs of socks to represent the chromosome pairs that make up the human genome in a witty display. Susie Freeman and Liz Lee had worked together on an interesting installation called Veil of tears which represented the problems of malaria in Africa. A series of mosquito nets hung from the ceiling and contained the drugs needed to fight malaria. Altogether an interesting and thought provoking exhibition