4,000 My Little Ponies, a giant Transformer, miniature nail art sculptures and more make up a London exhibition dedicated to UK hobbies.
ADVERTISEMENTSome people bake bread and crochet, others turn hundreds of citrus peels into firelighters.
Hobbies, no matter how strange sounding, are quite possibly one of the purest expressions of human experience. As we drift through the uncertain waters of life, these pockets of passion connect us with others and unlock the child-like wonder to be found in everything.
Celebrating this is an ambitious new London exhibition called ‘Come As You Really Are’, a deliriously happy display of the UK hobbyists that have dedicated their lives to crafting, repurposing and collecting.
In January 2024, over 1500 people responded to a public call out from Artangel, a London-based arts organisation that commissioned the project by British-Gujarati artist Hetain Patel.
The breadth of submissions was astonishing, with everything from chainmail jewellery to Warhammer figurines and 19th century banjos.
“We wanted to get as big a range of works and ideas and processes as possible,” Patel tells Euronews Culture.
“One of the reasons that so many different approaches and works are in the show is to celebrate how complex we are as people.»
The idea first came to Patel while he was working on a giant Transformer sculpture with his dad, alongside a series of Spider-Man costumes.
“I was thinking, how great would it be to get all the world’s Spider-Man costumes in a room together to celebrate the audacity of people creating a bit of time to make something spectacular, or to make something that they have agency over.
And then I started thinking, what about other hobbies? The idea that underneath all of them is something they share in terms of people dedicating their time just because they’re curious, or obsessed.”
Even the exhibition’s unique location speaks to the sense of local community that hobbies inspire; a beautiful Grade-II listed building (and former Wetherspoons pub) in Croydon, on the outskirts of London.
“The ethos behind hobbies and hobbyists is sometimes they’re things that are on the margins, or things that are done privately or in homes. In Croydon, it felt really worthwhile bringing art and creativity and craft to this place, engaging with audiences here instead of asking them to go to central [London].”
A menagerie of maximalism
Between the giant ET, wall of football shirts and floor carpeted in pompoms, it’s hard to know where to look first – until a pastel pink paradise of plastic equines makes itself known.
Miranda Worby has been “seriously” collecting My Little Pony toys since 1997, an obsession that began when she was a child: “I wanted a real horse, and my parents said no, so I ended up with a My Little Pony.”
Now 41, she has over 4,000 of them; vintage Sea Ponies peeping from red drinking cups beneath a rainbow splash of generation 5 plushies. Only an original 90s My Little Pony arcade machine didn’t make the cut due to being too big.
ADVERTISEMENTMost were found at car boot sales, in charity shops or on eBay, although some remain from her childhood.
“I can pick one of these up off the shelf and it takes me back to a time. It’s definitely a comfort thing. A time where there were no worries, you had no stress,” Worby says.
The overlap between crafters and collectors here is an intriguing one that highlights the often dismissed artistry and self-expression that goes into curating things.
“What [people] choose to collect, how they display it or why they do it tells you as much about a person as creating, you know, a crochet animal from scratch,” Patel says.
ADVERTISEMENTHobbies became a lifeline during the Covid-19 pandemic, with 59% of British people taking up new ones, according to a 2022 Samsung survey. It was a reminder of the power of creativity to give us back a sense of agency, and to let us express our physical desires even when isolated from them.
Eleanor Roberts has been making delicately detailed capes for years, both for fun – one is based on her 50th birthday cake, another a psychedelic mermaid tail – and as a way to share her experiences of the menopause and being a wheelchair user due to living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), a complex chronic condition that causes extreme tiredness.
One cape in particular is dedicated to Roberts’ love of running, made from remnants of her gym kit, which had begun to upset her.
“It really helped me to stop hurting as much. It was like, okay, I can’t do that anymore. I can still remember it. I can still dream about it. I can still run in my wheelchair.”
ADVERTISEMENTThe remarkable thing is how every object at this exhibition tells such a personal story, visceral glimpses of an entire life and world view outside of our own that, in this case, we can even touch and try on.
“The capes are not made to be art that’s just looked at, they’re made to be worn and experienced,” Roberts says – with one exception: a long flowing white cape that’s based on Bulgarian folklore wood nymphs, who strongly dislike men.
«As I said, anybody can wear any of the capes, but anyone identifying as male probably shouldn’t wear this cape. They will die,» Roberts jokes.
Having grown up in a small town, 28-year-old Jade Parsons’s found a sense of belonging through cosplaying as her favourite characters from role-playing games like Elden Ring.
ADVERTISEMENT«I tend to go for bad guys or morally ambiguous ones. I go for one’s with whacky accents as well. When you’re in the outfit and a child comes up to you. If you do the accent, it blows their mind and it fills me with unbridled joy,» Parsons says.
She hopes this exhibition will help others to better understand more niche hobbies – and to discover their own.
«Just the level of love and care I can see in everyone’s work and collections, how can you not love it and feel enthusiastic back? Some people don’t have a particular passion in life, and I hope that visitors can maybe find one. I didn’t particularly have one when I started cosplaying. But when I started, I came home and said, these are my people.»
In a time that’s weighted with productivity guilt and the pressure to monetise every element of our lives, ‘Come As You Really Are’ stops us to question: What if we allowed ourselves to enjoy what we want for ourselves?
ADVERTISEMENT«It’s okay to have a hyperfixation. It’s amazing to have something not work related that you’re passionate about,» Parsons says.
«You’re more than just your job. You’re more than just the sum of how people see you. There’s always that creative side to everybody.»
Come As You Are is on display until 20 October at The Hobby Cave, London.
