Hetain Patel: Come As You Really Are

Hetain Patel brings Come As You Really Are to the North Warehouse at Aviva Studios in February 2027. It's an exhibition that gathers more than 250 objects from hobbyists across Greater Manchester, so it's a local collection in every sense of the word.

Patel is an award-winning British-Gujarati artist and filmmaker whose work is built around making things by hand. He's known for taking everyday items and turning them into artworks: he once converted his first car into a real-life Transformer robot and made a Spiderman suit at his kitchen table. Those kinds of projects combine childhood obsessions with reflections on identity politics and power dynamics, and the handmade objects he produces are painstakingly crafted, a nod to the manual labour often carried out by migrants. Come As You Really Are is described as his most ambitious and far-reaching project to date.

Rather than filling the room with his own work, this exhibition puts the spotlight on the hobbyists of Greater Manchester. The more than 250 objects on display come from people across the region, and the whole thing was commissioned and produced by Artangel in partnership with Factory International and numerous galleries and museums across the UK. The callout for hobbyists to take part closed on Sunday 30 August, so by the time it opens, the collection will be set.

It's a big project for a big space, and it's one of the first major things coming to Aviva Studios in 2027. You'll find it in the North Warehouse, and it opens in February.