Wellcome Gallery - ‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’

Wellcome Gallery.

19th September 2024 – 27th April 2025

In September 2024 Wellcome Collection will present ‘Hard Graft’, a free major exhibition exploring experiences of physical work and its impacts on health and the body. Making connections between undervalued labour, the people who do it, and the spaces where it happens, this exhibition brings in to focus the people whose health, work and rights remain hidden on the margins of society.

‘Hard Graft’ will centre on three places of work: The Plantation, The Street and The Domestic Space. Each a distinct location for often hard, physical labour, where conditions may be precarious or unsafe, and workers have little or no access to healthcare, a stable income, or basic rights. From sex work to street vending, and domestic work to prison labour, the exhibition will highlight how unregulated and stigmatised work practices have reinforced healthcare inequalities throughout history – and continue to do so today.

Featuring more than 100 objects, with artworks from Brazil, Bangladesh, Trinidad, Sudan, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico and the USA, to name a few, the exhibition will draw upon the interconnections of working practices across different geographies. Contemporary and historic accounts will highlight the histories of resistance and the power of collective action by workers in response to their working conditions – from organised protest to spiritual and medicinal healing practices.