Stop, Look, Listen: Three things to do this week.

STOP. Brain: The Mind as Matter at the Wellcome Collection

This major new free exhibition, starting from 29th March to the 17th June, explores what humans have done to brains in the name of medical intervention, scientific enquiry, cultural meaning and technological change. Featuring real brains, artworks, videos and photography, 'Brains' asks not what brains do to us, but what we have done to brains, focusing on the bodily presence of the organ rather than investigating the neuroscience of the mind.

LOOK. Gillian Wearing at the Whitechapel Gallery. 

From the 28th March to the 17th June, the Whitechapel Gallery is showing the work of Turner Prize-winning YBA artist Gillian Wearing, whose films and photographs explore our public personas and private lives. Drawing from early fly-on-the-wall documentaries and reality TV, Wearing's portraits reveal a paradox- given the chance to dress up, put on a mask or act out a role, the liberation of anonymity allows us to more truly ourselves. 

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LISTEN. Writing Madness on BBC Radio Four.

Vivienne Parry takes her diagnoses of literary heroines into the 20th century and the age of Freud, the Great War and the explosion of the 'sciences of the mind' focusing on three great works of fiction, including Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. On Saturday 31st March from 11.30am-12pm. 

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Government Art Collection - Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain by Cornelia Parker at Whitechapel Gallery

The second display of the Government Art Collection at Whitechapel Gallery in London was this year selected and curated by artist Cornelia Parker. The artworks are arranged by hue, hence the exhibition title 'Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain'- a familiar mnemonic used to recall the key colours of the spectrum. The exhaustive task of sifting through the Government Art Collection's vast array of 13,500 works led Parker to select the images by applying a kind of colour theory; a conscious way of choosing the works which would be hung in just one room. As Parker explains in the exhibition guide; "Presenting a cacophony of colour; an optical mix that allows the opportunity to blend your own political tint [...] The spectrum as a way of unifying or codifying the works gives rise to curious juxtapositions, random clashes of Old Masters rubbing shoulders with YBAs". 

Image: Government Art Collection