“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”, according to George Bernard Shaw. But how many selves do we create? How is the self that office colleagues see related to the one out dancing tango on a Saturday night?
In the Artangel exhibition Come As You Really Are, housed in a former department store on Croydon High Street, Hetain Patel displays 14,000 objects created or collected by hobbyists across the UK. From typewriters to dolls’ houses, mosaics to cosplay outfits, people’s private passions are presented en masse in this exuberant and entertaining exhibition.
There is craft on show, some of it very high quality – patchwork quilts, ceramic still lifes, paper cutting, crochet. There are collections testifying to a dogged singlemindedness – whole rooms of My Little Pony and Polly Pocket. And there is the downright bizarre – an arrangement of used pencil erasers, heart-shaped orange peel used as firelighters, framed collections of foil lids from mini milk containers, 3D nail art featuring spiders and cars.
Clever curation and choreography place a group of Sindy dolls painting an Action Man life model amid a battlefield teeming with model soldiers, while groups of Star Wars spaceships morph into hanging origami cranes and then radio-controlled flying wings.
Patel has made a film showing some of the hobbyists indulging in their pastimes, and also includes some of his own work in the show, like a tufted Ford Escort and a Spiderman mannequin.
He says: “There is a vulnerability in sharing something so personal, which often happens in private spaces around the responsibilities of daily life. But there is also a tremendous power in sharing collectively, which is at the heart of this project. I hope people join us in this celebration of the unstoppable nature of self-expression that is demonstrated by our hobbies.”
Come As You Really Are runs at The Hobby Cave, Grants, 14-32 High Street, Croydon CRO 1GT, until 20 October 2024.
