Discovering crime at the Wellcome Collection

Forensics: the anatomy of crime will show the journey of dealing with medical evidence, through multiple exhibition rooms representing different stages in the process – The Crime Scene, The Laboratory, The Morgue, The Court Room and The Search (a more abstract section based on looking for missing people).

Calum Storrie, founder and sole designer at his self-named consultancy, designed the exhibition, while Marianne Dear of Wellcome Collection designed the graphics in-house.

Wellcome Collection approached Storrie with the idea for the exhibition, and he then pitched to them. “I’d done three exhibitions for them before so they already knew me,” he says. “I’ve covered similar topics previously, such as skeletons, brains, and madness and modernity. Lots of their exhibitions deal with the body, illness and death.”

Artworks within the exhibition include Teresa Margolles’ piece showing actual fragments of floor on which a friend of hers was killed, and Šejla Kamerić’s commissioned piece of a walk-in fridge looking at real stories of execution victims in the 1990s Bosnian war. “It’s quite harrowing, grisly stuff,” Storrie says.

A long empty tunnel has been incorporated into the centre of the design, and mirrors have been installed. “It’s about going from clarity to obscurity – from light to darkness,” Storrie says. “We also wanted to play around with reflections.

“We’re trying to evoke ideas of place and put visitors in those environments, and induce disorientation,” he says. “The design represents the idea of people being lost among the facts and trying to work their way through a problem.”

A programme of events will accompany the exhibition, and a publication of the same name by crime writer Val McDermid will be available to buy.

Forensics: the anatomy of crime will take place 26 February – 21 June 2015 at Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.