SOUTHAMPTON.- John Hansard Gallery in partnership with New Art Exchange presents Trinity, the largest solo exhibition to date by artist Hetain Patel. Trinity is also the title for an ambitious new film by Patel, the final part of a film trilogy that will be premiered at John Hansard Gallery in August 2021 and presented at New Art Exchange in January 2022. Working with dance, martial arts and sign language collaborators, and with a specially composed score Trinity represents Patel’s most significant and developed film work to date.
Alongside Patel’s new moving image work, Trinity (2021), John Hansard Gallery and New Art Exchange will also show the first two acclaimed films from the trilogy: Don’t Look at the Finger (2017) and The Jump (2015) bringing together the different facets of the rich filmic world the artist has been creating over the past five years. The exhibition will also feature a number of related new sculptural works, which incorporate costumes, and action figures of the films’ characters, as well as a film merchandise ‘Gift Shop’.
Patel’s new film Trinity, continues his exploration of language and physical communication, centring on the discovery of a martial language that once united humanity. Interspersed with visual references from his life - both his artistic practice and his Indian cultural heritage, the film features two women – a young British Indian woman (played by Vidya Patel) and a young Deaf garage worker (played by Raffie Julien) – engaging in a fight, creating a unique physical language weaving together martial arts and sign language, created with ongoing collaborators, the fight choreographer Chirag Lukha and Deaf artist and writer Louise Stern. A coming of age story intermingled with supernatural references, Trinity transforms traditional Indian practices with a recognisably Hollywood approach, employing an epic soundtrack and fight choreography. The film explores the representation of the British Indian experience on screen, emphasising the female voice, intergenerational conflict and the truth that our bodies hold beyond language, foregrounding a strong sense of hope.
The Jump (2015) connects the widely recognised fantasy of Hollywood action and superhero films with the domestic setting of Patel’s own British Indian family in the UK. Featuring Patel’s homemade movie replica Spider-Man costume, this two sided video installation shows two different perspectives of the same super slow motion jumping action, so much so that it is almost like a moving photograph. Featuring 17 of Patel’s family members, The Jump is shot in Patel’s grandmother’s home, the house where he and his immigrant relatives lived at various points since 1967, and where his late grandmother stayed until she died in 2017.
Utilising the characteristic humour that Patel is known for, perfectly showcasing the struggle between responsibility and identity, the semi-autobiographical film installation creates an immersive cinematic experience that is both playful and sinister. Shot in a similar way to the production of a big budget action movie, it features an original orchestral soundtrack by long term collaborator, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Amy May whose work NME once described as being “like Arcade Fire playing in an English country garden”.
Don’t Look at the Finger (2017) is an exploration of the highly-styled genre conventions of Hong Kong martial arts films and how they have permeated mainstream films via the directors of Quentin Tarantino and Ang Lee, and blockbuster films like The Matrix (1999, The Wachowskis). It is also a reminder of how some of the highly specific signature symbols of historical cultural traditions and languages can become interestingly blurred and entangled in today’s hybrid and eclectic visual landscape. The work is deeply influenced by Kung Fu master, Bruce Lee who, in a memorable scene from Enter the Dragon (1973, dir. Robert Clouse) warns the viewer to never be distracted by a finger that is pointing at something, just in case we miss what it is actually pointing at.
In Don’t Look at the Finger, two young Black protagonists and their families dressed in brightly patterned West African robes, all gathered in a church for what seems like a wedding ceremony. Bruce Lee’s assertion rings particularly true during this work. Whilst Patel is seemingly begging us to look in one direction, the movements of the couple show us that the real action is going on elsewhere. As bodies physically utter their truths, it is clear that through rituals, combat and sign language, real human communication is being eagerly sought. Each movement enhances the significance of the union at hand – which brings with it a series of intimate moments and power struggle, remarkably without the use of spoken language throughout.
All of the protagonists within Don’t Look at the Finger are either people of colour or marginalised identities, encompassing the UK, North America, South and East Asia, and West Africa, the confluence of culturally specific reference points informs the fluid relationship between reality and fiction in the film. The result of numerous collaborations with skilled specialists in a wide range of fields, Patel’s works feature specially made costumes by seasoned costume designer Holly Waddington (Lady Macbeth, dir. William Oldroyd, Ginger& Rosa, dir. Sally Potter), choreography, language and music that each question their own origins, blurring the concept of cultural authenticity.
Hetain Patel’s exhibition is presented in partnership with New Art Exchange, Nottingham, and will be shown there from 29 January – 24 April 2022. Trinity has been financially 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.
Don’t Look at the Finger was originally commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella with Manchester Art Gallery, QUAD and supported by the Jerwood Choreographic Research Fund. The Jump was originally commissioned by Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, USA.
“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
