High Society at the Wellcome Collection makes its point almost the moment you enter. A variety of mundane pipes hailing from across the globe are juxtaposed with everything from beautiful anthropomorphic brass betel nut cutters from nineteenth-century China, to the pre-packaged plastic wine glasses found in Tesco today. The motley assemblage demonstrates that the desire for an altered state of consciousness is a universal human impulse.

The exhibition takes a morally neutral position on drugs, and instead explores five aspects of their use in society, from the transition from medical to recreational consumption, to collective intoxication practices and prohibition efforts.

Though the variety of material is compelling, the exhibition lacks a cohesive narrative. Little explanatory text is mounted alongside the objects, and what information is provided is available only in an accompanying booklet, which the sequence of exhibition rooms makes it difficult to follow. Though such methods of hand-held communication may be useful in the perennially crowded galleries of London’s major art museums, the Collection has plenty of space to accommodate viewers and should aim to make the visitor experience more straightforward.
Nevertheless, the Collection succeeds in making an engaging display using a theme which may initially seem to have been selected to pull in audiences. To demonstrate the ubiquity of drugs, the exhibition combines an eclectic array of objects not often found under one roof, connecting sixth-century Babylonian tablets with contemporary photography, and Pre-Raphaelite painting with Starbucks cups. With the political side of drug use and trade never far from the media spotlight, it is interesting to take a step back and consider how deeply intertwined drugs are with the human experience.

Until Feb 27

JESSICA DAVIDSON