All About London: Wellcome Collection- This September: Hello Happiness

Friday 27 August 2021

Wellcome Collection- This September: Hello Happiness - a new podcast

A free museum and library exploring health and human experience

A smiley face made up of collaged figures holding hands on a yellow background created by graphic illustrator Sinem Erkas

Hello Happiness: listen to our new podcast

The Wellcome Collection Podcast

Free | Online | Available on iTunes, Spotify and all podcast platforms

The Wellcome Collection Podcast is all about health and human experience, with the first five-part series, Hello Happiness, exploring the meaning of positive emotions: hope, resolve, tranquillity, joy and ecstasy. The monthly podcast is presented by Bidisha and Moya Lothian-Mclean and invites artists, activists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and people with inspiring stories of positivity and transformation, to explore what emotions such as hope, joy and tranquillity mean to them.

Listen now

Events & exhibitions

Installation view of Joy Inside Our Tears, by Harold Offeh, projection of performers against a yellow wall.

Exhibition highlights: Joy

Online | On Happiness season

Video

Explore our video series, where our curators give tours of the current exhibitions, offering insight into key themes and objects featured in the galleries.

Here George Vasey takes you through the 'Joy' exhibition, which is part of Wellcome Collection's On Happiness season.

Forest landscape at dusk. Vegetation and moss-covered rocks on the forest floor with tree trucks and leaf canopy in the background captured at dusk

Chrystel Lebas, Regarding Forests

5 Sept–2 Dec, Tues–Fri, 11.00–16.00

Installation | Free | Drop-in | Touring exhibition at Bart's Heritage, EC1A 7BE

In connection with the On Happiness season, artist Chrystel Lebas presents two new works from the Regarding Forests photographic series in a multi-sensory installation at Barts Heritage in the City of London, offering a peaceful and restorative encounter for staff, patients and the public amid a busy working hospital.

A young black woman sits facing a screen, wearing yellow over ear headphones. The screen shows blue imagery with "CYP x CALLY" written across it. There's a clear perspex cabinet next to the sitting woman, with some homely items in it.

What does it mean to be human now? Four views by CYP x CALLY

Until 30 Sept

Installation | Free

Last chance to see this powerful installation.

The project was led by 15 young people from Copenhagen Youth Project, and features perspectives drawn from local communities in Caledonian and Barnsbury wards (‘Cally’), accompanied by footage from Black Lives Matter protests.

Photograph of an individual sat at a desk in a museum gallery setting, wearing a face covering and a pair of yellow on-ear headphones. They are holding a pencil in their left hand, writing on a sheet of paper. To their right is a small post box and a pencil holder. Behind them is a window. In front of them is a large information panel with the title, 'Do you consider yourself healthy? Oreet Ashery, 2019 - ongoing' written on it.

Do you consider yourself healthy?

Until 30 Sept

Installation | Free

Last chance to see this Reading Room project.

Artist Oreet Ashery invites you to consider how you feel about your own mental and physical health. Add your response to a growing collection of intimate, moving, funny and frank accounts of health submitted by our visitors. See the changing selection of responses in the Reading Room.

Image of a book cover, on a turquoise background. The cover has a black and white vintage photo of a woman in a state of undress sitting with a man

Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts: A History of Sex for Sale by Kate Lister

Out 30 Sept

Book | RRP £25

Authored by one of the most original contemporary thinkers on the subject, this book is an enlightening illustrated cultural history of the sex trade that puts sex workers centre stage, revealing how they have lived and worked all around the globe.

Image of a book cover on a yellow background. The book cover is turquoise with 8 yellow square windows illustrated, each with a black figure outlined within.

Intensive Care: a GP, a community & a Pandemic by Gavin Francis

Paperback out 2 Sept

Book | RRP £9.99

“Searing yet beautiful” (Rachel Clarke), Intensive Care is about how coronavirus emerged, spread across the world and changed all of our lives forever. But it's not, perhaps, the story you expect.

Discover more online

Stories

Mixed media collage artwork using a combination of two different photographic prints. The background of the collage is made up of a black and white photograph of the head of a young woman with long dark hair. She is looking off to camera left with a neutral expression on her face. Overlaid on top of her portrait, running through the centre of the image, are horizontal strips of a colour photograph showing a large expanse of open water with the ripples on the surface of the water visible through the light and dark reflections. The horizontal strips are spaced out such that the portrait beneath can be seen through the gaps.

Feeling Through Nature

Serial

Founder of The Willowherb Review, Jessica J Lee invited writers to explore the connection between the natural world and wellbeing. The resulting essays range over subjects including homesickness, hiking, assault, healing, domestication and neglected landscapes. Nature here proves to be anything but a straightforward solace: instead it is a place of mixed emotions, painful recovery, reclaimed knowledge and unexpected beauty.

Between two summers

Finding my body through the wilderness

Mixed media collage artwork using a combination of photographic prints and archival illustrations. The background of the collage is made up of a black and white photograph of the head of a young woman with long dark hair. She is looking to camera with a neutral expression on her face. Overlaid on top of her portrait are horizontal strips of a colour illustration showing a botanical drawing of a ginger plant, showing the stems and roots. The horizontal strips are spaced out such that the portrait beneath can be seen through the gaps.

姜、蒜、葱 Ginger, garlic and spring onions

View all Stories

Beyond Wellcome

An archaeologist wearing a head torch holds an eight-year old girl up to examine painted handprints inside a cave in Sulawesi.

A night in with Eimear McBride

FANE | 5 Sept | 18.30

Join Eimear McBride in conversation with Alex Clark to mark the publication of Something Out Of Place: Women and Disgust.

Deciphering by curious collective

New Diorama Theatre | 7 Sept - 2 Oct | Wheelchair accessible | With captioned, relaxed performances

Science-led, ground-breaking theatre company curious directive takes audiences inside the real cave network containing the oldest graphic communication ever found.