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Viewing Hetain Patel’s latest project ‘Come As You Really Are’ at The Hobby Cave at Grants

“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,” says artist Hetain Patel of Come As You Really Are. On view at The Hobby Cave at Grants in Croydon until October is a cornucopia of thousands of objects, all of them crafted, modified or collected by avid hobbyists all over the UK. There’s also a few things Patel has made too.

The presentation is intended as a portrait of creativity in the UK, showing how the little things become the big things, and how we infuse meaning into our surroundings, shaping our belongings to reflect our values. It all started from a nationwide open call from Patel, asking the public to share how they spend their spare time.

The handmade submissions by hobbyists Patel received are displayed together with new and existing works by Patel. The Other Suit, 2015, for example, is a Spiderman suit crafted at the kitchen table over months, following tutorials on YouTube. It sits next to Patel’s 2013 Fiesta Transformer, a robot sculpture built from his first car with the help of his father in the family garage in Bolton. Somerset Road, 2024, meanwhile, is a Ford Escort tufted by the artist in the pattern of his grandmother’s living room carpet. These personal details pay homage to the inventiveness of labourer migrant communities like Patel’s, and highlight the universal, insuppressible urge to invent.

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Dates
18 July 2024 — 20 October 2024
This exhibition is a homecoming for artist Liaqat Rasul in the town he was born and raised in – the perfect location for his first institutional solo exhibition. This retrospective, titled “NAU, NAU, DOH, CHAAR,” (Urdu for 9924) at Tŷ Pawb Art Gallery in Wrexham moves through significant moments in the artist’s career to date, from 1999, the year Rasul made his fashion label into a limited company, through to more recent collage and fibre works, delicate, intricately crafted pieces that often transform everyday ephemera and overlooked items.

“I’m a low tech and spontaneous kind of artist, scissors, scalpel, tapes, cutting mat rulers and pens biros and pencils are ready to hand.” Rasul has said. “I adore colour and working immediately with mark making. I often use a thread and needle to combine parts of the collage, I don’t do neat and precise I enjoy being a bit messy and not perfect, I think its much more energised and beautiful to view.”

Sometimes suspended and kinetic, like mobiles, using textures, like pleats, drawing on his background as fashion designer, Rasul uses a unique mix of symbols, patterns and colours to create astonishingly detailed and evocative pieces. “NAU, NAU, DOH, CHAAR” is a testament to Liaqat’s extraordinary and wide-ranging artistic practice and offers a glimpse into the diverse influences that inspire him, from Indian textiles (the artist lived and worked in the country for 12 years) to his advocacy for mental health and wellbeing issues. And above all, the takeaway from Rasul’s works is one of fostering kindness towards one another, which is something we all need to hear at this time.

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Dates
13 July 2024 — 02 November 2024

Viewing ‘Zachary Eastwood-Bloom: Rewiring’ at Pangolin London

‘This collective body of work is akin to ‘Rewiring’, taking things apart, trying to work out where things go, what they do and then putting them back together again’, says Zachary Eastwood-Bloom. The Glasgow-based artist presents these new works in a solo exhibition at Pangolin London – where he was once sculptor in residence – until 23 December: wall sculptures in ceramic and wood made using both digital and traditional techniques, alongside drawings and etchings.

‘Rewiring’ has a personal tenor for Eastwood-Bloom, and marks a new direction in his practice. Eastwood-Bloom made the work during a four year period spanning two years before and after his father’s death; an intimate exploration of universal themes of grief and loss, they are a cathartic response to a tumultuous period in his life, a search for meaning in a chaotic and changing world.

Look out for two major new clay works: ZXY, a wall piece comprised of fifteen black ceramic vessels arranged in a sequence constitute Eastwood-Bloom’s “internal alphabet”, shapes and symbols to convey emotions; another significant ceramic wall installation in the exhibition is Dark Matter, a collection of sculptures mounted on board and coated in ultra black paint. This piece grapples with the concept of trying to understand something that is present but escapes notice. Eastwood-Bloom explains, “I am trying to quantify it in some way, to give structure and mass to something ephemeral and shapeless but impacting. Dark matter, after all, is thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. It is dark because it is difficult to detect, but there is evidence of its presence.”

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Dates
17 July 2024 — 23 December 2024
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