TMC Reviews… Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives (Wellcome Collection)

by Lemon Tart

It’s all about the ‘noughties’ at the moment, isn’t it? That word that was rarely used by the media – but now covers the broadsheets like a rash. Apparently every journalist thinks they’re the first to use it as a metaphor for any politician/celebrities’ bad behaviour over the last decade.

They’re all trying to work out what sums up the past ten years: the recession, global warming, the Cheeky Girls. But really it’s the internet – that digital ivy that’s managed to root its way into every second of our lives. And with it has come our obsession with social networking: first MySpace, now Facebook – a site that makes us each the cover of our own magazine and takes our obsession with the self to a new level. You may not have seen your cousin for five years, but they know you like Nutella on toast and have a penchant for bad nineties music videos.

‘Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives’ at the Wellcome Collection mirrors this phenomenon by creating eight mini Facebook-like sections about their subjects (nine: two are twins): the perfect piecemeal show for the iPhone generation. Nine people have been chosen who link to identity and explore the general theme: the androgynous photographer Claude Cahun, one of Britain’s earliest gender reassignment patients April Ashley, Samuel Pepys the diarist and Alec Jeffreys the DNA pioneer, for example. Each subject is given a small room (which is made from MDF and gives the place an unnerving Homebase smell) in which text, video and objects that link to their lives are displayed.

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In many cases this is done very well. April Ashley’s section includes two TV interviews in which she holds remarkable composure whilst talking about sex changes on mainstream talk shows, and a cancelled passport which denies her female identity. Claude Cahun’s self-portraits exploring the boundaries of female sexuality are compelling, and refreshing when compared to the glut of modern photographers who followed in her wake, often less successfully. Francis Galton’s measuring instruments are fascinating – Galton was obsessed with the discredited idea that people’s traits could be linked to the size of their eyes, or the shape of their head.

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However, just as the internet is awash with irritating ads and an excess of options, this exhibition is by no means limited to its title’s boundaries. For, in addition to the ‘eight rooms’ there is a plethora of extras. On entering, the visitor is presented with an oh-so-ironic booklet – a kind of exercise book for adults. There’s no doubt it’s a beautiful piece of graphic design. However, a double page spread which states ‘Enter Your Pin’ on one side and lists hundreds of pin numbers on the other, for example, is thought-provoking – but no more than a Guinness ad or a shopping list. Other ‘play’ objects include a computer that tells you where your surname originates from (the answers seemed pretty similar) and a screen that records your movements and then plays them back to you after a delay (this was undeniably hypnotic).

Finally, there’s a library full of biographies – and that’s when I was flummoxed. I had just walked through an exhibition with more on display than an average Nuts model. It had meant well, carefully trying to source a ‘greatest hits’ of science, gender and self-expression into a small space. Yet surely this library was a step too far – exhibitions are best when they are efficiently-packaged bursts of inspiration.

Or maybe not. When the first visitors to the Natural History Museum walked its corridors they were shown shelf after shelf of natural wonders – nothing was edited down for them. Maybe I’m the ultimate Noughties product: incapable of enjoying an exhibition unless everything is bite size.

Anyway, have a good Christmas… I’m off to spend some time on Facebook…

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‘Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives’; runs until April 6th; Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE; free; click here for more information