Thirst: In Search of Freshwater at the Wellcome Collection

Opening at the Wellcome Collection this summer, Thirst: In Search of Freshwater tackles a subject that feels more urgent than ever. A sweeping look at humanity’s fraught, fragile and deeply intimate relationship with freshwater – spanning millennia and continents – the exhibition is a powerful reminder of one of the most fundamental elements. The sheer range of objects is astonishing, each piece revealing how water seeps into every corner of culture, health and daily life. George du Maurier’s Victorian wood engraving To Sufferers From Nervous Depression (1869), a satirical cartoon linking Britain’s dreary weather to mental health woes, is only a few steps away from sandy, loose sediment samples scooped from the Tiber’s riverbed, dating back to 2000 BCE.

Unexpected thematic threads ripple through the galleries. One particularly poetic example is the Mesopotamian Embodied Wedding Blanket (1960s) from Iraq, its intricate floral motifs blossoming anew in the Eden in Iraq Wastewater Garden Site Plan (2011) displayed below it. Here, flora becomes both ornament and utility, filtering sewage and demonstrating how art imitates life, then life loops back to imitate art.

Equally striking are the exquisitely crafted Water Jug Filters with Elephant, Camel, Hare, Bird and Fish Designs and Arabic Inscription (c 900-1200). These earthenware vessels feature tiny ceramic grilles, as delicate as lacework, designed to keep insects and impurities at bay. Adorned with carvings of animals and inscribed with words of wisdom such as “abstain and heal,” they fuse beauty with necessity, underscoring how access to clean water has always been entwined with both spirituality and survival.

Meanwhile, Anthony Acciavatti’s Hanging models inverted core samples of Jakarta, New Delhi and Phoenix-Tucson Megaregion (2025) looms above, stark and modern. These inverted core samples of supercities visualise the alarming consequences of groundwater depletion, subsidence, and sinkholes cracking open the urban soil. It’s a brief but sobering glimpse of the present – and future – dangers of overdrawing the planet’s lifeblood. Across artefacts, artworks and scientific data, the exhibition flows with a single, vital message: water is life – and it’s up to all of us to keep it flowing.

Christina Yang
Photos: Adam Rouhana Ein Aouja, 2022 Photographic print © Adam Rouhana

Thirst: In Search of Freshwater is at the Wellcome Collection from 26^th June 2025 until 1^st February 2026. For further information or to book, visit the exhibition’s website here.