We Are Alloys

Event Details

Saturday

11am – 5pm

Sunday

11am – 5pm

Age

All ages

Venue

Coming soon

How to Attend

Drop in

Price

Free

Hetain Patel returns to the Festival with an ambitious new commission spanning moving image, painting and performance, exploring British Asian futurism, family and myth-making, alongside performances of his acclaimed work Mathroo Basha.

For over two decades Patel has collaborated closely with members of his own family across film, sculpture, animation, painting and performance, resulting in his live performance work Mathroo Basha (Mother Tongue in Gujarati), in which Patel choreographs movement to recorded interviews with women from his family, learning and embodying their words almost like prayer.

Alongside performances of Mathroo Basha, the commission marks an early development stage in Patel’s ambitious feature film work set in Blackburn, presenting new works that reimagine the town and its British Asian communities within a speculative cinematic universe. Drawing on references ranging from science fiction and speculative myth-making to family archives and contemporary portraiture, the project uses photography, painting, film and moving image to give shape to Patel’s cinematic world-building.

As part of the development process, Patel will work with women from different generations within Blackburn’s British Asian communities, inviting conversations around identity, heritage, memory and cultural transformation.

Presented within the architecture of the Cotton Exchange, a fictional martial arts dojo meets retro-future house of worship, creating an environment shaped by ideas of gathering, ritual and transformation. Referencing both sacred and civic architectures, the installation considers how spaces hold community and imagination, constructing a fictional world suspended between memory, myth-making and futurism.

The commission opens up a place of experimentation for Patel: testing visual languages, characters and atmospheres across multiple media to develop proposals for feature film development.

Presented in partnership with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council and the University of Lancashire.

About Hetain Patel

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

His work exploring identity and freedom, using choreography, text and popular culture appears in multiple formats and media, intended to reach the widest possible audience. His film and performance work online have been watched over 50 million times, which includes his TED talk of 2013 titled, ‘Who Am I? Think Again’.

Patel is the winner of the Film London Jarman Award, 2019, Kino Der Kunst Festival’s Best International Film 2020, and was selected to participate in British Art Show 9, 2021/22. In 2021 He received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Artist Award, a

Henry Moore Foundation Award, declined a British Empire Medal and was a judge on Sky Arts television series, Landmark. Patel is a Patron of QUAD, Derby, and Film

London’s Jarman Award, and was a trustee of the Liverpool Biennial 2021-25. In 2023, Patel was on the selection committee for the BAFTA’s. His commission for

Artangel, Come As You Really Are, continues to tour throughout the UK.

Patel is represented by Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, and his artworks are in permanent collections in the UK and internationally, including Tate, British Council,Government Art Collection, Arts Council Collection, M+ Museum Hong Kong, KNMA New Delhi, and Fondazione In Between Art Film, Rome.

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