Three rooms of modern-day holy relics — the sort of celebrity artefacts that inspire devotion, obsession and occasionally mass hysteria — have taken over Somerset House in an exhibition exploring the cult of fame.
Part art show, part fan shrine, it looks at the ways people fixate on celebrities and pop culture icons, amassing deeply personal collections of memorabilia or turning public grief into something approaching religious ritual.
What separates these collections from more traditional obsessive collecting is that everything here revolves around people rather than objects. These are not stamps or trains or vintage teapots — they’re fragments of celebrity lives elevated into secular relics.
There’s a mix of artworks, photos and collections on display – ranging from the humble domestic fridge plastered with photos to a tiny piece of chewing gum. Focused as it is on celebrity, the exhibition is filled with names that most people will recognise – from Elvis to the Spice Girls to the musician formerly known as Prince and the Diana formerly known as Princess.
The exhibition shows off the secular icons as hooks to lead up into looking at what is collected as a section of objects, but also asks why people fixate on them and want to collect that one person/group, objects to the exclusion of all others.
Sometimes it gets too much for other people – the examples of the mourning for Princess Diana, or even Dobby the House Elf shine, leading to requests not to leave plastic flowers or socks (or more recently, marmalade sandwiches).
One gallery includes a shrine to George Michael, complete with a salvaged church pew and an Orthodox-style icon portrait that deliberately blurs the line between pop star and saint.
Then comes the exhibition’s strangest finale: an entire room dedicated to that single piece of Nina Simone’s chewing gum, preserved by musician and collector Warren Ellis and displayed like a sacred relic in a chapel.
It’s a curious end to the exhibition, and one that reminds us maybe of the oddities that celebrity fandom can throw up sometimes. You can visit either to commune with the celeb memorabilia on display, or for a glimpse into the minds of the worshipers.
The exhibition, Holy Pop!, is at Somerset House until 9th August.
Entry is on a pay-what-you-can basis, and you can either book tickets in advance or pay on the day.
Details here.