Photo by Hannah Pye
Making is her mode of thinking. Working with textiles, beads, acrylic, oil, and found objects, she is drawn to colour, texture, and the physicality of building layered forms slowly through repetition and experimentation. Colour traces back to her upbringing - the patterns of clothes, the saturation of Indian festivals, the rhythm and movement of community. Ideas develop through the act of making; research and material unfold together.
Her practice is informed by women’s lived experiences, material relationships, nature, and her Indian heritage, in particular textiles, ritual, and Hindu mythology. Since becoming a mother, her awareness
of her identity as a South Asian woman in the UK has deepened, shaping an ongoing exploration of belonging, culture, and the futures she and other women create for the next generation.
Research moves through conversation, observation, and residency, as well as engagement with mythology, symbolism, and historical narrative. Cloth holds particular significance: it carries time, care, and memory. Saroj works with her own saris, her mother’s and grandmother’s, and those collected from other Indian women, each piece of fabric arriving with a history already inside it.
More recently, Saroj has returned to painting, a medium she set aside when she began sculpture and installation at Central Saint Martins, and which came back through painting alongside her twin daughters. Working in oil, oil stick, India ink, and acrylic on both cloth and canvas, the paintings extend the language of her installations onto the wall: dense fields of repeated marks, embedded materials, and washes of colour that hold movement and memory. The two practices, installation and painting, inhabit the same world.
At the centre of all her work are women’s stories: their resilience, complexity, and connections across generations. Her practice is abstract, yet rooted in people, place, and emotion, creating work where underrepresented communities find themselves held, and where the personal opens into the collective.
Bio
Saroj Patel graduated from Central Saint Martins, London, with an MA in Fine Art in 2019. She is a Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
In May 2026, Saroj opens her solo exhibition Matrika: She Who Makes Worlds at New Art Exchange, Nottingham (22 May – 12 September 2026). That year she also participates in Troublemakers and Prophets: Elizabeth Allen and Other Visionary Artists at Compton Verney, Warwickshire (28 March – 31 August 2026), and completed a two-week collaborative residency in Gujarat, India, working with local women on a new installation.
In 2025, she was commissioned by Women of the World (WOW) Rotherham to create a site-specific installation for Rotherham Minster, and opened her first institutional solo exhibition, Ocean Mother, at The Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library, Preston. That same year she was awarded a solo exhibition at New Art Exchange, Nottingham through NAE Open 2025.
In 2024, Saroj opened three solo exhibitions: Journey of the Blue Sun at The Old Fire Station, Oxford; Interwoven at The Art House, Wakefield; and Ocean Mother at Orleans House Gallery, London. She also unveiled her first outdoor public installation, The Wings Flutter, Grasslands are Alive, commissioned by RBG Kew for Wakehurst.
In 2022, she was commissioned by Clifford Chance, London, to create Observational Realities, two sculpture installations for their offices, following her 2020 win of the Clifford Chance Sculpture Prize. That year she also participated in Tate Lates’ panel discussion She Made Me Do It, gave a talk at the Ways of Seeing Conference at the National Gallery, London, and was awarded the Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Fund.
In 2019, she participated in Art Night, Hix Art, and Participatory Workshops at Tate Exchange. The same year she was a finalist for the Hix Award, shortlisted for the Tiffany & Co. x Outset Studiomakers Prize, and won the Tension Fine Art Gallery Prize.