[Museum]
[Exhibition]
Hetain Patel (interview): “Sometimes the work’s made by communities of people, like some of the quilts for example, or pompoms. But oftentimes it’s people just working on their own, kind of squirreling away in their kitchen or their bedroom, making a miniature or something small and often for themselves. They might show it to some people close to them, but it’s not something that they necessarily talk a lot about. And so it’s an incredibly vulnerable thing that people are doing. And because of that, it’s something that they really care about and speaks very deeply about who they are. And so I’m hugely honored that they’ve entrusted us and me and the Artangel team to look after this stuff and to display and to show it off in this way. When, you know, didn’t know exactly what we were doing. And so that’s very meaningful to me. And, you know, we’ve taken a lot we’ve taken great care as a team to to try to show things in the most exciting way we can.”
[Carpeted car]
Hetain Patel (interview): “The carpet’s very significant because it’s, it’s a replica patterning from my grandmother’s home, which is our family home that my family immigrated to, to Bolton from, from India. And so that holds a lot of significance. And the car is from that time, from the late 80s, that we were in that house a lot as well. It’s, you know, it’s a ubiquitous working class car, the Ford Escort. At one time, it was the most bought car in the world. And so lots of people recognize it. Lots of people have their own relationship with it. Lots of people have their own relationship with this kind of carpet. So even though there’s a kind of strangeness to it, there’s a lot of familiarity as well. It’s important that you recognize something in there as well.”
[Cupboard containing collection of Coke cans and bottles]
[KitKat memorabilia]
[Cigarette boxes]
Ken Ford (interview): “Well, one of the large bedrooms is now packed full of this sort of stuff. Some of it’s on shelves, in filing cabinets. Couple of trunks in there. But they’ve also got a study downstairs, and some of it is in that in cabinets down there. Even the garage has got a filing cabinet with the plastic bags in it. And, also the Coke cans are in the garage.”
[Carpet made of 55,000 pompoms]
[Pompoms]
[Art]
[Nail art]
Zahra Nadeem (interview): “Wow, there’s a lot of stuff. And it’s just so nice to see the, I don’t know, just everyone’s individuality in their work because they don’t they don’t benefit from it, really. Like, they don’t monetize from it. They do in their spare time, I can relate to that as an artist. So yeah. And even the rocks that I like, I used to paint rocks and I was a kid, so when I saw them, I got like a it, I was like, it’s insane to me to think that they’re in an exhibition. And Hetain has just captured everyone’s passion so beautifully.”
[Painted rocks]
[Room filled with My Little Pony toys]
Miranda Worby (interview): “At first I thought they wanted about five or six, so I sent over a picture of some and they said, no, can we have more? So I sent over about 14, and then they actually phoned me and said, we’re going to need more. And I was like, OK, how many do you need? We want them all. I was like, all of them? OK. Like, how am I going to get 4000 more little ponies down from Suffolk to to Croydon? But they sent couriers and helped me pack them up. And then they said they wanted the shelving as well so they could recreate the room. I was like, OK. So yeah, it was interesting getting them from Suffolk to Croydon. Definitely.”
[Costumes]
Jade Parsons (interview): “Well, one thing I love about hobbies is there’s overlap. So there’s some miniatures over there. I paint miniatures at home. There’s some nail art upstairs, and sometimes I have to do that for a costume. So I’ve been I’ve been chatting to the other people here, and we’ve actually been sharing ideas, and I think we’ve kind of started branching into each other’s hobby a little bit because, one chap who spoke to he’s really interested in actually making a costume now. So I think that’s really exciting.”
[Figurines, soldiers, and Warhammer]
[Model cars,Transformer made from car parts by Hetain Patel]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.