Three rooms of modern holy relics occupy Somerset House in an exhibition about the cult of fame. The display blends art and fan shrine, showing how people fixate on celebrities and pop culture icons through deeply personal collections of memorabilia. The focus stays on people rather than traditional collectibles, treating fragments of celebrity lives as secular relics. The exhibition includes artworks, photos, and items ranging from a domestic fridge covered in images to a tiny piece of chewing gum. Recognizable names appear alongside examples of mourning and requests to avoid leaving plastic flowers or other offerings. A George Michael shrine uses a salvaged church pew and an Orthodox-style icon portrait. The finale dedicates an entire room to Nina Simone’s preserved chewing gum, displayed like a sacred relic.
"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."
"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."
"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."
Read at ianVisits
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]