The Wellcome Collection's 'The Coming of Age'

Reviewed by Laura Cumming for The Observer

The exhibition includes Serena Korda's 'Wild Apples'  2024

 

'But the ripe old apples in Serena Korda’s enormous installation, scattered around three lifesize female figures, are beginning to rot. Korda’s three graces are split between portrait and anatomical model: half of each face is the skull beneath the skin, all rendered in porcelain. A depiction of what the world sees, you might argue (a bag of bones), compared with what we are to ourselves.

 

Would Korda have shown men in the same way? At least one fascinating aspect of this show is the historic distinction between spry old guys in their 90s, celebrated with back-slapping images, and the crones of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.'

 

View the article in full here

April 13, 2026