Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights

Thought provoking exhibition at the Wellcome Collection examining the impact of work on health.

The show cleverly interwove historical and contemporary ideas and organised objects under three themes of work on plantations, in the street and in the home, picked as they are sites of work that is undervalued by society. I would like to have seen it broadened out to factories, service industries and offices.

I spent a long time watching a video on how chemical factories have ground up on old plantations sites along the Mississippi surrounding the towns which were based around the original slave houses. There was also had a frightening section likening prison work to slavery with the astonishing statistic from 2013 that there were more black men in jail in America than would have been slaves in the past.

The street section covered people who sell on the street, people who clean urban areas and prostitution. The space was dominated by an installation from Lindsey Mendick inspired by two protests by sex workers which took place in churches. In the case nearby I loved the inclusion of contemporary cards advertising the services of sex workers alongside the 18th century equivalent engravings after Wencleslaus Holler.

I found the home section more confused as it looked at both the role of women in the home and domestic service. Maybe more on the historic aspects might have grounded it.  I did however like Shannon Alonzo’s sculpture “Washerwoman”.

Closes 27 April 2025


Review

Telegraph


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