Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life

The Wellcome Collection, London. Until 31 August 2011.

Of more than a dozen exhibitions held at London's Wellcome Collection in the four years since it opened, curator Kate Forde admits that this is the first on which she has consulted the gallery's cleaners.

Dirt attempts to make visitors think again about mundane muck. The exhibition takes inspiration from the ideas of anthropologist Mary Douglas, who noted that what we consider to be dirt is based on context — a theme that is explored in six cities around the world and across human history. Accompanying events include conversations with a street sweeper and with the wonderfully titled 'chief flusher' of local utility firm Thames Water.

Starting in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, the displayed pottery, tiles and engravings show the 'cleanliness is next to godliness' obsession of the Delft Christians in their spotless homes. We encounter favourites of science historians: one of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's surviving microscopes sits alongside a copy of Robert Hooke's Micrographia with its drawings of microbes. Van Leeuwenhoek's description of the tiny 'animalcules' found in dirty water revealed the creatures previously hidden in the grime.

The health theme continues to unfold through the squalor of Victorian times, with John Snow's famous map on the spread of cholera in London, and medical apparatus from Joseph Lister's pioneering use of antiseptics in Glasgow. But things soon take a darker turn as the show moves on to reveal how ideas of cleanliness were co-opted for the oppression of those who were considered dirty.

Dirtiness can have social implications. Credit: MUSEUM OF LOCNON/WELLCOME IMAGES

A 1911 exhibition on hygiene in Dresden, Germany, is the starting point for the fourth cityscape. The chilling quote from the country's Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring from the 1930s hints at where this cleanliness obsession is headed: “Eradicate biologically inferior hereditary taints. Promote a gradual cleansing of the nation's ethnic body.”

The exploration of the use of the word 'dirty' continues with the section on the people who clean the latrines of New Delhi and Kolkata, and their lowly place as 'untouchables' in India's caste system. Here is placed the most deliberately provocative of the modern art pieces displayed alongside the historical works throughout the show: several large grey slabs that make up the 'Anthropometric Modules' constructed from human faeces, by artist Santiago Sierra.

Most of the artworks are blunt in carrying Douglas's message that dirt is not bad, simply contextual. Angela Palmer's indistinguishable air samples, collected in 2007 from the cleanest and most polluted sites in the world, make invisible again what van Leeuwenhoek strove to make visible. Serena Korda's bricks — made with dust collected from locations ranging from J. G. Ballard's books to the UK House of Commons debating chamber — transform the dirt by giving it utility.

The most powerful proof that dirt is 'matter out of place' and can be redeemed by repositioning it is found at the end of the exhibition. Here the show moves forward in time, to New York's Staten Island in 2030. By then, it is hoped that Fresh Kills, one of the world's largest waste-dumping sites, will have been transformed into an urban park.

With exhibits such as a carpet made of dust, Dirt also generates what it celebrates. So it is a good job that the gallery's cleaners are on board.