Holy Pop!
Intriguing exhibition at Somerset House investigating how people create public and personal shrines to pop stars and cult icons. The first room looked at public expressions of grief from the flowers for Princess Diana to part of the tree trunk which Marc Bolan crashed into. It would have been interesting to look a further back in this section and maybe look at the idea of leaving objects at the shrines of saints as an investigation of the origins of the idea. The next room looked at personal shrines and people's collections of memorabilia and how they display them. I loved an altar to George Michael by Dot Alma which travels to events in the UK and the idea from Molly Soda that a kitchen fridge can become a shrine to family life. The last room just presented one object, a piece of chewing gum left on her towel before a performance by Nina Simone, rescued and presented as an installation by Warren Ellis. The show did make we think about things which I have kept and how they...