‘Milk’ explores our relationship with milk and its place in politics, society and culture. It considers how milk has come to be seen as so central to perceptions of nutrition and “good health” in the UK. The choices we make about milk are personal. But it is also a highly politicised liquid that has been used to exert power as well as provide care.

The exhibition brings together over 100 objects, including items used in farming and infant feeding, historical advertising, public health posters, and contemporary artworks.

‘Milk’ includes new artistic commissions by Danielle Dean, Jess Dobkin and Ilana Harris-Babou, as well as a new documentary by Leo Hallam Dawson on UK dairy farming and a 2023 iteration of Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie’s project ‘Deeper in the Pyramid’. This installation is part of a long-standing body of collaborative work interrogating milk’s networks of exploitation and care. Human and non-human milk’s multiple technological forms as liquid, solid, powder and foam are expressed through different media. These include the liquid crystal of the screen, digital animation , ceramic clay, language and lactones. The ceramic sculptures draw on milk’s molecular formations, its poured, extruded, and bodily forms, and the vessels that have contained it across time and place. The book allows us to create our own journey of exploration through this spiralling and far-reaching substance.

https://wellcomecollection.cdn.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/7b349f0e-7f7f-4b02-b654-458bf5ef3d08_ShareOfThroat.pdf