Death: A self-portrait at The Wellcome Collection

What do these three images have in common?

Well, each one of them was singled out for special scrutiny by my ‘critical eye’ during the six years I spent looking at pictures (sorry, I mean studying History of Art). More importantly, and what may have popped into your head whilst looking at them just now, is that they are all concerned with humanity’s ceaseless need to explore and try to explain death. Humans do this by creating art, and carrying out rituals – sometimes these two activities are one and the same.

Warhol’s Little Electric Chair, one of Goya’s etchings from his The Disasters of War series, a 12^th century Japanese hand scroll depicting hell. Each work from different eras, and the product of very different cultures – but all three connected with a sincere attempt to address this universal concern, this fascination with the great equaliser that is death.

Death is the subject of the new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection. Following my own inquisitive interest in death, I braved ‘snowmaggedon’ on Friday to visit Death: A self-portrait.

I am very fond of The Wellcome Collection. When I ‘grew out of’ The Science Museum, which I regularly visited as a child (and, frankly, after becoming fed up of the constant presence of large numbers of tourists and schoolchildren), I turned to the Wellcome Collection to satisfy my scientific curiosity. For me, a visit to this place kills two birds with one stone, because it explores both science and art/culture.

The Wellcome Collection was founded by Henry Wellcome (1853-1936): a pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and avid collector of books and objects. He was interested in the history of medicine, including connected subjects such as alchemy, witchcraft, anthropology and ethnography, creating a diverse collection from a number of different cultures and eras. The Wellcome Collection, in its present day form on the Euston Road, opened to the public less than 10 years ago, in 2004.

Interestingly, the exhibition is comprised of objects amassed by another collector (albeit a living one): Richard Harris. Upon entering the exhibition, the variety of objects assembled here immediately confirmed my assumption that my morbid interest in death is not unique but shared by the rest of humanity. Across five rooms, the exhibition groups objects around the following themes: Contemplating Death, The Dance of Death, Violent Death, Love and Death, and Commemoration. Curated in an efficient and tasteful manner, the exhibition thankfully does not give in to the ‘temptation’ to pay tribute to any of the multitude of deathly clichés – no darkened rooms, black walls or purple velvet here.

Stand out pieces for me were:

• A selection from Goya’s The Disasters of War, which have lost none of their emotional weight since their production 200 years ago, during which time many of us have become a desensitized to violent images through their omnipresence in popular culture.
• Otto Dix's Der Krieg was another fascinating colletion of etchings and aquatints, especially given their situation in a room with the above series. It was interesting to see to what extent Goya’s series influenced this more recent one, whose subject matter is World War 1. There are certainly some similarities stylistically, but the immediacy of brutality expressed in Dix’s works really pay tribute to his experiences as a soldier.
• Mexican Day of The Dead skull. I love Day of the Dead artefacts from the perspective of design – the bold colours, the highly decorative patterning. The celebratory intention of the piece also comes as somewhat of a relief, located as it as towards the end of the exhibition, when you have spent the past hour being reminded of your own mortality by countless memento mori.
• The bone chandelier In The Eyes of Others, by Jodie Carey, 2009 (mixed media). I love the concept of creating something decorative with bones, yet the very pure white colouring of the bones places this piece firmly in the realm of artifice. No one was harmed in the production of this artwork! The piece took me back to my visit in 2008 to Sedlec Ossuary, also known as ‘the bone church’ in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. There, the bones are all real, belonging to an estimated 40,000 – 70,000 long-deceased people.

Bone chandelier at Sedlec Ossuary

One thing I would have been interested in seeing explored here more is the way contemporary societies, cultures and individuals deal with death, perhaps considering some elements of popular culture. But, since this exhibition is based on one man’s collection, I can’t really criticise it for not extending its scope in other directions that might have been of interest to me.

The objects chosen for exhibition here are alternately beautiful, grotesque and curious. Individually they each reveal an attitude towards death; collectively they create a dialogue between these attitudes, each originating from a different place, a different time - from a different individual. I would say that this dialogue reveals more similarities than it does differences. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given that death is the one thing we all have in common – as the proverb says, there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes!

Going forwards, with the world becoming increasingly secular, it will be interesting to see how mankind’s ways of making sense of death evolve with the decline of religious beliefs. In the meantime, I highly recommend visiting this exhibition to catch up on the story so far.

Death: A self-portrait

Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

Until 24 February 2013

Whiskey Kittens Rock & Roll NYE Party - Kaff Bar

New Year’s Eve can be a bit of a non-event. Expectations run high and subsequently the night itself can be a letdown. My NYE experiences sit in two camps: either a relatively low key night in, or a completely over the top night out that you spend the first week of the new year recovering from. This year I was hoping to strike a comfortable balance between those two possibilities.

As it’s my first New Year's Eve since moving to Brixton, staying in was never really an option. Unsurprisingly I was spoiled for choice, with many of my favourite local haunts promising a great night out – The Duke of Edinburgh putting on a Masquerade Ball, The Windmill offering a night of live music as usual, and the Prince Albert having their (in)famous Offline Club. However, it was Kaff Bar – another favourite of mine, and venue for recent Brixton Blog's Meet Brixtons – that got my vote. They were offering a Rock ‘n’ Roll Party courtesy of Whiskey Kittens.

Whiskey Kittens seemed like the obvious choice. The name evokes thoughts of a debauched night of rock n roll, ie. my idea of a good time. And of course whiskey has long been my spirit of choice. My taste for the drink developed from humble beginnings in my teenage years, when I would drinking Tesco’s own-brand scotch (a stag on the bottle designating its authenticity) in an attempt to stay warm (yes, that's a euphemism for getting drunk) whilst queuing for a gig somewhere like the Astoria. Happily I am now a more sophisticated connoisseur of this most delectable of spirits, but we all have to start somewhere.

I’d heard of Whiskey Kittens before and had been intrigued, so NYE seemed like the perfect time to check them out. Tickets can often be pricey on NYE, but the £15 entry ticket included a cocktail, glass of bubbly at midnight and ‘access’ to a buffet - which seemed more than reasonable to me.

After some drinks and takeaway from Bickles at my gaff, we headed to Kaff. Having spent the previous night at Face Down at The Scala (London’s biggest rock club, apparently) I was interested to see how different these two rock nights would be. At Face Down we saw Knotslip (a Slipknot coverband, obvs) whilst surrounded by a crowd comprised of two types of people: a) teenagers b) people who wished they were still teenagers. This was not a classy affair, and a lot of the audience were the kind that give the metal/alt subculture a bad name. Someone in the queue threw up before even going in. Apparently someone left in an ambulance. Before being admitted to the venue my chewing gum was confiscated by a security guard, who also looked with great suspicion at my keyring (a plastic edamame bean pod) as if it might be a container for pills. I was then given a once over with a metal detector. What a welcome! Later, as the band wrapped up their set, some girls, completely uninvited, decided to gyrate obscenely on stage, for some unknown reason seeking to degrade themselves. After this on the whole rather unpleasant experience (apart from the band who were top notch) I was looking forward to a much classier rock evening with Whiskey Kittens…and I wasn’t disappointed.

As we finally set foot in Kaff at around 11.45pm, the David Bowie tribute act, Cats from Japan, were already in full swing, playing all the hits like ‘Rebel Rebel ‘and ‘Starman’. We grabbed our free cocktails from the barmen (all extremely glamed up, back-combed hair and all, looking like they were in a Cinderella or Poison cover band). Kaff always has quite quirky cocktails – last time I had a 10p Mix which was a candy-sweet cocktail decorated with retro sweets such as Flying Saucers. This time I had what I think was a passionfruit flavoured cocktail with those silver balls (you know, the ones you can use to briefly make it look like you have tongue piercing) floating on top.

Cats in Japan singing us into 2013

After a brief intermission to count down to midnight (no Europe’s The Final Countdown here) the band proceeded to finish their set, then join the rest of us to dance the night away. Three burlesque acts (Luna de Lovely, Ava Iscariot and Spank Grrrl) treated us to their titiliating routines whilst we sipped our glasses of bubbly. Although I'm sure some people will disagree, I believe burlesque to be something that empowers and liberates women, and so these girls provided a stark and most welcome contrast to what I had witnessed the previous night. 

When the burlesque acts were finished, the Whiskey Kittens DJs started spinning their records and the audience invaded the stage, turning it into a dancefloor. The vibe of the night was rock’n’roll but the music was much more diverse than that – although we had some rock classics like Van Halen’s Jump, there were also plenty of great pop tunes from the likes of Lady Gaga and Girls Aloud. There was a great, friendly atmosphere – very relaxed with much bonhomie. Even the bouncers were super nice.

In the early hours of the morning, I walked home on a wave of positivity (laced with some booze). What a fantastic night it had been. Bring on 2013.