The Wellcome Collection - The institute of Sexology

The sexology exhibition is the first uk exhibition to bring together the pioneers of sexology. Spanning 150 years of sex research. It is on until September at the Wellcome Collection with talks through out the year and is something i've wanted to sink my teeth into for a while. We arrived and immediately sat down for 2 cakes and a cup of tea. Jammy and i had an appetite for chocolate and learning.

Upon entry, (no pun intended), i realised the exhibition had wasted no time getting right into it, when approaching our 3rd window, we came to discover what i thought were torture items were infact old fashioned sex toys. I'm going to go out here on a limb guys and say, i didn't know they even had sex toys back then. They were big, wooden and not something you would probably want to put up yourself. They weren't even in an inviting colour, like marshmallow pink.

The second cool thing I loved were little fruit clams with sex figurines inside them. Yes, you read that right. You could open up and apple and see a blowjob. I thought they were awesome. Imagine that as your fruit bowl!

The Marie Stope part of the exhibition was something that interested me the most. She was someone who pushed for contraception amongst women, after noticing that smaller families were happier than bigger families. She felt that contraception was the only way families should limit their size. She founded the first birth control clinic in Britain, which she decorated with baby photos all around it to dispose of any notions that she was against children or pro- abortion. She brought out a sex manual called "married love" and also wrote explicit practical advice on numerous amounts of publicly available leaflets. Her advice was controversial and influential in its time. Further more, this was all while she was a eugenicist, which was her main reasons and interest in contraception. Bonkers.

There was a really interesting film on a woman questioning an all girls gay school on how important sex is to them and why. It was pretty captivating but hard to explain. James and i sat and watched it for atleast 30 minutes. Other peoples opinions on sex differ so much, especially from the difference in cultural backgrounds or how they are raised. Some wanted to wait for marriage and sex wasn't important to them, some were proud in being promiscuous and others didn't really have much to say on it.

Over all, there was an abundance of cool things, but little things, collections of old owned items which were sexually connected, writings and audio. It was a great afternoon.

We wandered next door where i came across a feedback wall with cards. Whilst this wasn't connected to the sexology exhibition, i was inspired by "drug" and brought out my own Sigmar Polke in me (and bad spelling).