(FT232: 56-57)

We spend about a third of our lives asleep, yet still have only the vaguest of ideas about why we do it, or of what happens to us during that time. A new exhibition at the revamped Wellcome Collection sets itself the ambitious task of exploring this vast and slippery subject through art, science and social history, and isn’t afraid to admit that, despite notable advances in our understanding of the biomedical and neurological processes involved, sleep remains a mysterious, wondrous and even fearsome state.

Housed in a dark space broken into discrete pockets (and designed by the German architect Nikolaus Hirsch), the flickering of the exhibits in and out of view itself invokes the fleeting secrets of sleep.