Come as You Really Are: Hetain Patel

Come As You Really Are is a shape-shifting project that brings together a nationwide network of arts and culture organisations led by artist Hetain Patel and commissioner Art Angel.

Following the inaugural exhibition in Croydon, the project has been, and continues to be, presented by partners across the UK from Spring 2025 and into 2026.

The National Festival of Making, in partnership with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, presented Come As You Really Are in the summer of 2025, curating an exhibition that showcased objects created, modified, or collected by over 100 hobbyists from Lancashire and across the UK.

Visitors were invited to take part in workshops and performances led by local makers and enthusiasts, including learning to crochet, badge-making, watching live Warhammer 40K demonstrations, and creating their own personal Ford Escort with artist Hetain Patel, amongst many more.

Over its seven-week run, the exhibition welcomed more than 9,000 visitors. 

Part of a UK-wide network of 13 partner organisations, this collaborative project is a nationwide celebration of creativity and self-expression.

Thousands of contributions by hobbyists were presented alongside a new artist film by Patel across the country, each hobby reflecting a conscious choice to devote time to living on one’s own terms, in contrast to a society shaped by consumerism.

Come As You Really Are highlights the ingenuity and freedom of expression at the heart of everyday hobbies. It broadens our understanding of who gets to be called creative, and where the impulse to create originates.

At its core, the project celebrates a nationwide community whose labours of love form an alternative portrait of the UK.

About Artangel

Artangel collaborates with artists who defy boundaries to give form to extraordinary ideas.

The art produced by Artangel boldly responds to our shared environment. It’s often unlike anything you have experienced before. Artangel has taken over an empty prison, uncovered an underground opera house, made sculpture from solid air, commissioned a mile-high column of light, and a thousand-year-long piece of music.

Artangel celebrates the artists of today and identifies those of tomorrow.

Website

About 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. 

Website

Funders and Partners

Commissioned and produced by Artangel.

In partnership with Factory International, Manchester; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; Museum of Making, Derby Museums Trust; National Festival of Making with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery; Wolverhampton Art Gallery; Barnsley Civic; Inverness Museum and Art Gallery; Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland; CCA Derry~Londonderry; Hospitalfield, Arbroath and Tate St Ives.

Supported by Artangel’s Guardian Angels.

With special thanks to Dasha Shenkman OBE.

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, Artist

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, Artist

Photography by Emma Colbert-Mooring and Robin Zahler.