Last week on the first Friday of the month I went to the Wellcome Collection Late. Can you believe that we are already in the fourth month of this year?! Where has the time gone? The Wellcome Collection has always been a favourite place of mine in London, filled with various items ranging from dangerous torture chairs to beautiful books lining the reading rooms. I haven’t been to a Late here before, and since it is quite a small place compared to the larger museums which run Lates I was interested to see how it would play out.

The first place that we went to see was the new exhibition, part 2 of States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness. This exhibition followed on from Ann Veronica Jansses: yellobluepink, which I was unable to see. Part 1 was really popular, so I was keen to get into States of Mind early. The exhibition drew upon various perspectives from artists, psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists who have delved into the subject of understanding the conscious experience. I seem to be attending quite a few exhibitions where photography isn’t allowed and it has been a struggle for me to enjoy these exhibitions to the fullest as a result. There is an installation near to the end of this exhibition called The Whisper Heard, which gave my friend and I shivers. It consisted of two contrasting voices; one of a young child, Severin (the artist’s son), who was recorded I believe when he was in the early stages of language acquisition, and Tony, a man who had a stroke that caused aphasia and was in the process of learning how to speak again, as an adult. Their separate voices were projected from megaphones, but if you closed your eyes it gave an eerie effect and a sensation of disorientation — which is what the main character of the novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne, experiences, as both Tony and Severin try to read aloud from the book.

On the same floor sit both of the permanent collections; Medicine Man and Medicine Now. Medicine Man is set in a dimmer environment with lots of backlighting behind objects. This is especially the case for the first set of items that visitors see — a shelf full of different types of glass flasks and liquid holders. Henry Wellcome collected an array of items and the collection exhibits a cross-section of extraordinary objects he acquired, ranging from birthing tools to Japanese sex ads. It provides a very different perspective on some of our obsessions with how we view medicine and health. From a photography point of view, the glass lighting gave these wonderful double reflections of the image, almost like a double exposure.

Medicine Now is all about ideas of science and medicine since Henry Wellcome’s death in 1936. A well-lit area, I particularly liked Annie Cattrell’s SENSE, made of transparent resin and rapid prototype resin, illustrating the activity patterns of the human brain as it responds to the five senses. There is a definite elegance to the simplicity of the sculptures despite the complexity of the technology used to make them.

Most of our experience of walking around in the exhibitions had been really good until near the end of one of their permanent collections. A group of people came in and began shouting, swearing loudly and acting rather obnoxiously. It was a shame that people would behave in such a manner but this is a rarity and should not discourage others from going for the first time or revisiting a wonderful collection.

What I didn’t realise before was that there is a difference between Lates and Late Spectaculars. The first has been done every first Friday of the month and the Museum would stay open late, until 10pm, allowing visitors to walk through the current exhibitions at leisure and eat a special dinner in the Kitchen. After closer inspection of the website, the Collection is now normally open late on Thursdays. The Friday Late Spectaculars only happen every couple of months and incorporate activities, performances, workshops and lectures to allow a deeper understanding of a specific topic or theme. At most of the bigger institutions their own versions of Late Spectaculars occur every month instead of every couple of months. I would definitely like to go back for a Spectacular but I’m not sure if it would provide more photography opportunities, or whether it would be like the Wellcome’s Late, where photography was not permitted.