Hetain Patel
Trinity

Gallery 1
The Jump

The Jump (2015) brings together elements of widely recognised Hollywood action and superhero films within the domestic setting of Hetain Patel’s grandmother’s home, which has housed the artist and all of his relatives at various stages since 1967.

Experienced as a 2-sided video installation, The Jump presents Patel leaping off the sofa in his grandmother’s living room as his extended family looks on. His family are wearing formal Indian clothes, whilst he wears a homemade replica Spider-Man costume. According to Patel, this was the first sofa he had ever jumped off as a child whilst pretending to be the superhero. The Jump reflects on our collective desire for shared experiences and role models, but also his family’s great leap, in reference to their migration to the UK.

The semi-autobiographical film is shot in slow motion, which is at times so slow that The Jump could be considered as a moving photograph.

The film was shot to imitate the production values of a big budget action movie and the original orchestral soundtrack by Patel’s long term collaborator, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Amy May, takes the film further into the realm of epic cinema.

The Jump was commissioned by Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, USA.

Gallery 2
Don’t Look at the Finger

Don’t Look at the Finger (2017) features two main protagonists and a small group of companions, who have gathered in a church for a wedding ceremony. Through rituals, combat and signed languages, meaningful human communication is being sought, where each movement enhances the couples’ union.

The film is a reflection on how symbols of historical cultural traditions and languages can become interspersed within today’s diverse audio and visual landscape. Don’t Look at the Finger also references the history and legacy of Hong Kong martial arts films, in particular Enter the Dragon (1973, dir. Robert Clouse). In a memorable scene, martial arts legend Bruce Lee warns us not to be distracted by a pointing finger, just in case we miss where we should actually be looking. Similarly, Patel is seemingly asking us to look in one direction, whilst the movements of the couple suggest that the real action is taking place elsewhere.

Don’t Look at the Finger creates a fluid relationship between reality and fiction. The film embraces the UK, North America, South and East Asia, and West Africa as its culturally specific reference points, contrasted through the specially designed costumes, choreography, language and music that question their own origins.

Don’t Look at the Finger was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Manchester Art Gallery and QUAD. Supported by Arts Council England and Jerwood Choreographic Research Fund.

Gallery 3

“I really want visitors to the exhibition to feel they are stepping into the kind of ‘at the movies’ experience that I feel is still missing from mainstream society: the experience of being taken away by a trilogy of epic cinematic films, featuring complex culturally marginalised characters. Then I invite you to go behind the scenes, in a ‘making of’ experience usually only afforded by big budgets films. Here you can get up close to the intricate costumes and hear from the collaborators, before finally ‘exiting through the gift shop’, where the marginalised worlds of the films unapologetically occupy the mainstream cultural space they are typically excluded from, intentionally taking physical, economic and political space via film posters, action figures and other merchandise. In a world where we as marginalised people, are typically given the soap drama, Eastenders treatment, rather than the big movie Batman treatment, we have to create our own.”

Hetain Patel

This gallery features more of Hetain Patel’s new figurative sculptural works and a mock ‘Gift Shop’. Some of the original costumes from the film trilogy are presented alongside action figure prototypes of the leading characters. Using the visual language of Hollywood merchandising, these artworks expand upon the ideas and visual motifs from the films. Through his works, Patel combines the personal and autobiographical with global issues of marginalisation and representation. The pattern from his grandmother’s living room carpet that appears in the trilogy, has been incorporated onto the bespoke costumes and expanded to an epic scale on the gallery’s exterior windows.

Postcards, limited edition tote bags, and copies of the film posters are all available to buy from the JHG Shop downstairs. The Hetain Patel clothes designs shown here are also available to buy through the following website: www.contrado.co.uk/stores/baas-house-designs

Barker-Mill Gallery
Trinity

Hetain Patel’s new film Trinity (2021), centres on the discovery of an ancient fictional language that is a combination of signed languages and Kung-Fu. In this imaginary world, it is the intersecting lives of three women that lead to this discovery – Mina, a young British Indian woman, her mother, and Amy, a young Deaf garage worker.

In Patel’s fictional world, this corporal language that once united humanity is unintentionally rediscovered during the protagonists’ attempt to communicate with one another. As a consequence, their encounter sparks a ‘body swap’, enabling the pair to experience themselves in multiple avatars, as different genders, ethnicities, and body types. This body swapping is both a physical language of empathy, and a way to embody their ancestors – with the film proposing an idea of ancestry that expands beyond the confines of ethnicity.

Trinity is interspersed with visual references from both Patel’s artistic practice and his Indian cultural heritage to explore the representation of the British Indian experience on screen. The women’s interaction emphasises the female voice, intergenerational conflict and the notion that our bodies prevail beyond language, foregrounding a strong sense of hope. Intermingled with supernatural references, Trinity transforms traditional Indian practices through a recognisably Hollywood lens, employing a cinematic soundtrack and fight choreography.

Trinity creates space for cross-cultural costume design, created by Sarah Mercade, original music composed by Amy May, and dynamic choreography created with fight choreographer Chirag Lukha and Deaf artist and writer Louise Stern.

The production of Trinity has been supported by Arts Council England, John Hansard Gallery, New Art Exchange, Sadler’s Wells, Gulbenkian, Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation, British Art Show 9, and produced by Tilt Films.

About the Artist

Hetain Patel (b. 1980, Bolton) is an artist whose practice explores the subtle and often humorous complexities of identity formation. Since 2004, Patel’s works have been shown nationally and internationally within institutions such as Tate Britain, London, and the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing. John Hansard Gallery has a long history of working with Patel, having first worked with him in partnership with Art Asia in 2012, and again as part of JHG Sampler in 2018.

Patel’s practice is varied and wide-reaching, ranging from performing Bruce Lee impersonations at the Royal Opera House, completing performance commissions for Tate Modern and Southbank Centre, and making a working class Transformer robot from an old Ford Fiesta car with his dad (shown at JHG Sampler in 2018). Patel toured his live performance, TEN, internationally and was invited to do a TED Talk which has since been viewed globally over two million times.

Patel’s film Don’t Look at the Finger has recently been purchased by TATE and the British Council. He is a Sadler’s Wells New Wave Associate Artist, and winner of the 2019 Film London Jarman Award. Patel is also part of British Art Show 9 which is touring the UK throughout 2021–22.

hetainpatel.com

Behind the Scenes