Wellcome Collection

We put a lot of value on stupid stuff like trainers and caviar and NFTs of monkeys, but our most essential resources – air and water – are treated like they’re worthless. That’s probably because they’re free; and if big businesses can’t make a few bucks out of them, they may as well pollute them to death. So as pollution slowly robs us of breathable air, the Wellcome looks at art and archival scientific material that can help us parse the senseless choking of humanity.  A stack of concrete blocks by David Rickard as you walk in symbolises the weight of all the air in the gallery. Air is heavy, physical stuff. Chunks of 3.5 billion-year-old fossilised reefs show how the oceans oxygenated the Earth and made it habitable, while paintings of plankton by Irene Kopelman capture how essential microscopic organisms are to our existence, then Matterlurgy’s installation of spinning pollution particles shows just how suffocating the environment has become. A picture emerges here of air as a political substance, how the poor live in the most polluted places, how toxic air overwhelmingly impacts the most vulnerable, how skies are divided between nation states. This is air as a weapon, and Forensic Architecture are calling for disarmament It makes for grim viewing, but it feels important. Especially when you get to the heart of the show, Forensic Architecture’s excellent ‘Cloud Studies’ film installation. The group uses forensic techniques to investigate global injustices. They use witnes

You might think plants are just green things you somehow can’t manage to keep alive in your flat, but they’re so much more than that. Plants are political. And the Wellcome wants to show you how.  Where normally with shows at the Wellcome there’s a big focus on science, here they’ve decided to take aim at the societal impact of plants, on how colonial explorers trampled on indigenous culture in the hunt for new species, destroyed habitats, ruined lives all in search of monocultures and profit. There are a few bits of archival material here – an ancient image of a comfrey on papyrus, a nineteenth century drawing of fungi, a beautiful circular depiction of jain cosmology – but most of the show is new contemporary art. There’s a huge passion flower costume and seaweed sculptures by Ingela Ihrman, a plane tree outfit by Edward Navarro and ‘foraged’ sculptures by the Resolve collective. Best of all is a wall of pretty drawings by Joseca, a Yanomami artist from the Brazilian Amazon. But the show doesn't quite work. Most of the art really isn’t great, and the lack of the usual Wellcome science knowledge and archival ephemera throws everything out of whack. It needs context, directness, and most of all – just like nature – it needs balance.