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Hetain Patel, Somerset Road, 2024, installed next to quilts and carpets by hobbyists at Come As You Really Are. Photography by Thierry Bal.

Come As You Really Are

Hetain Patel

22.03.24 - 22.03.26

Status: The Collection

Current Locations: Derby, Inverness

Come As You Really Are by Hetain Patel featured thousands of objects created, modified or collected by hobbyists across the UK, and was shown alongside a new artist film. Each hobby represents a decision to commit valuable time to living life on one's own terms in a society dominated by consumerism.

The project began with a nationwide call-out inviting members of the public to share the activity to which they dedicate their spare time. Standing shoulder to shoulder with handmade submissions by hobbyists were new and existing works by Patel. The Other Suit, 2015, is a Spiderman suit crafted at the kitchen table over months, following tutorials on YouTube. It was presented along with Fiesta Transformer, 2013, a robot sculpture built from Patel's first car with the help of his father in the family garage in Bolton. Somerset Road, 2024, a Ford Escort tufted by the artist in the pattern of his grandmother’s living room carpet, was created for the exhibition. These time-consuming handmade objects directly echo the manual labour often carried out by migrant communities such as Patel’s family, while their hybridity points towards the new possibilities that emerge when we challenge and defy convention.

Come As You Really Are presents a variety of hobbies that showcase an individual's freedom of expression and ingenuity, and in doing so broadens our perception of who gets to be called creative and where the impulse to create stems from. At the heart of this project is a nationwide community of people whose labours of love are a lens through which the artist presents an alternative portrait of the UK.

Project presentations

Watch Hetain Patel talk about Come As You Really Are, an ambitious project featuring thousands of objects that are made, modified, and collected by hobbyists across the UK. 

Open in Grants, Croydon from July 18 until 20 October 2024, the exhibition presented a variety of hobbies that showcase an individual's freedom of expression and ingenuity. At the heart of this project is a nationwide community of people whose labours of love are a lens through which the artist presents an alternative portrait of the UK.

Video footage and editing by Tilly Shiner. Sound mixing by House of Noise.

Watch the video on YouTube
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In The Artangel Collection

Patel’s single channel film, commissioned as part of the wider project Come As You Really Are, showcases a multitude of hobbies from across the UK.

This widely presented work has been shown as stand-alone screenings in cinemas and alongside hobbyist’s objects in exhibitions at museums and galleries in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Find out more about the collection

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Fill out the form to find out more about how you can borrow and present this work, including tech specs, use cases, and more.

Artangel - Hetain Patel - ComeAsYouReallyAreEdit_09 Credit_ Lia Toby PA
“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.” - Hetain Patel
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Hetain Patel in Conversation With Mariam Zulfiqar

During the closing week of Come As You Really Are in Croydon, artist Hetain Patel and Mariam Zulfiqar, Director of Artangel, discussed the development of this expansive project at an event held at Grants, Croydon. The pair reflected on behind the scenes aspects of the exhibition, from the research stage where the artist and the Artangel team travelled nationwide, visiting conventions and meeting with hobbyists, through to the installation in Croydon, which amassed over 14,000 loaned objects.

"When we put out a call-out to invite people to submit what they do, we were aware that the tone needed to be very friendly and open. We were thinking about language. We're not aiming it at a contemporary art audience or a niche audience in a gallery sense. We want it to be open to anyone and everyone."
Listen to the audio on SoundCloud
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Image courtesy of Croydon Archives

The exhibition launched in London in July 2024 at Grants, a Grade-II listed, former department store in Croydon once famed for its tailoring.

This building was opened in 1895 and was once home to a store run by William and Richard Grant with over 60 departments including fashion and bespoke tailoring, hairdressing salons, china and glass, hardware, several restaurants and outside catering.

Croydon was the location of the first major international airport in the United Kingdom and Grants was visited by many overseas customers to attend regular fashion shows and buy goods from the store.

“Hobbies to me feel like a mini protest against the powers that control our time and tell us what to do and who to be."
— Hetain Patel

Digital Guide

Access the guide

Take a deep dive into the hobbies that preoccupy individuals across the UK with our Digital Guide, available on Bloomberg Connects. Hear from the hobbyists, see the their various creations and collections made, modified, and gathered in their spare time, and find out more about the online platforms where they are sharing their work.

Access the guide
shot of audience at in conversation event

Hetain Patel in Conversation with Mark Rappolt

Recorded at BAFTA, London following a screening of Come As You Really Are, artist Hetain Patel was joined by Mark Rappolt Editor-in-Chief of ArtReview in conversation, to explore the themes of the film and wider project. Together, they discussed how the deployment of Hollywood-style visuals elevates the hobbyists and their activities, lending cinematic weight to everyday passions. They talk about how the work navigates identity, cultural heritage, and the relationship between migrant culture and hand-making in the artist's practice.

"The work is about taking a leap of faith, or a leap into the unknown. And despite the discrepancies there can be between an immigrant generation and a UK-born generation, I still have a huge, insane respect for what my parents' generation did."

Listen to the audio on SoundCloud
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Hetain Patel

Hetain Patel is a London-based artist and filmmaker, whose work challenges reductive categorisations of identity and art. Often rooted in personal experience, and that of his immigrant family, Patel’s work invites us to see identity as multi-dimensional and complex, linked as much to what we choose to do, as to that which is assigned by birth, heritage, social norms, and conventions.

His films, sculptures, live performances, paintings and photographs have been shown worldwide in galleries, theatres and on iconic public screens at sites including Piccadilly Circus, London, and Times Square, New York. His works have been presented at the Venice Biennale, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing, and in London at Tate Modern and Sadler’s Wells.

Patel's work uses choreography, text and popular culture to explore identity and freedom, appearing in multiple formats and media to reach the widest possible audience. His online video and performance work, which includes his 2013 TED talk of titled, ‘Who Am I? Think Again’, has been watched over 50 million times.

Patel is represented by Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, and is a supported artist at Copperfield, London, a Patron of QUAD, Derby, and a trustee of the Liverpool Biennial. He is the winner of the Film London Jarman Award, 2019, and Kino Der Kunst Festival’s Best International Film 2020, and was selected for British Art Show 9, 2021/22. In 2021 Patel received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Artist Award, a Henry Moore Foundation Award, declined a British Empire Medal and was a judge on the Sky Arts television series, Landmark.

Patel's works are in public and private collections in the UK and internationally, including Tate, British Council, Arts Council England, Government Art Collection, Manchester Art Gallery, M+ Museum Hong Kong, KNMA New Delhi, and Fondazione In Between Art Film, Rome.