The Wellcome Collection.
By Ketziya Thiruchelvam, Tolworth girls’ school The Wellcome collection is a free museum inspired by the medical objects collected by Henry Wellcome.
The collection itself was split into many subcategories such as “play well, Why play matters" and “Misbehaving Bodies".
The exhibition of play examines the significance of play, both in childhood and across society at large. The exhibit shows things such as “nature/nurture" portrayed through various images taken of either classroom setting or playgrounds, also including older toys with simple structure usually made from wood.
It also illustrates “toys like us" which demonstrates the evolution of toys and how they affect the mind of a growing child and how they will view the world. The collection makes clear that toys are forever echoing these societal shifts, by not only playing into marketing pressures to enforce a certain gender stereotype, but also to produce a product which does not allow for imagination. “Toys like us” displayed many new models of toys such as a Barbie with a prosthetic leg and various other diverse action figures. The collection indicates how physical and adventure play has severely diminished because of the increase in digital play,” as physical play has diminished, so digital play has increased. The rapid increase in video gaming over recent decades has led to concerns over gaming addiction” the collection was called rules and risk, the idea initially being risk is an important part of childhood, which because of technology, physical risk is decreased but to grow children must challenge themselves physically, emotionally and mentally.
The misbehaving bodies exhibition is to question life death and illness, the whole collection is one giant compilation of videos and images and interpretations from care givers, relatives or even final messages from the ill. The idea of the collections is for people to question, how does illness disrupt and shape our identity. Overall the collection was very thought provoking and in-depth in all aspects of the exhibitions.
By Ketziya Thiruchelvam.
