About
Permindar Kaur is a sculpture/ installation artist, whose approach to art is playful, using childlike objects to explore the territory of cultural identity, home and belonging. She uses simple forms, for instance furniture (beds, cots and chairs) and toys (soft, brightly coloured figures, trucks and animal forms). These objects resemble displaced domestic belongings, which have been distorted and manipulated to invoke the uncanny. They are deceptively familiar in their appearance and initially might remind the viewer of innocence, childhood and play belying their sinister undertones.
Kaur has exhibited internationally; major solo exhibitions include Hiding Out, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts (2014); Untitled, Berwick Gymnasium Art Gallery, Berwick (1999); Comfort of Little Places, Aspex, Portsmouth (1998) and Cold Comfort, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Mead Gallery, Coventry (1996). Major group exhibitions include Animals & Us, Turner Contemporary (2018); A Vision of Utopia, Spirella Building, Letchworth (2014); Spoilt Rotten: Young Curators, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Wales (2005); At Home with Art, Tate, London and touring (2000); Hot Air, Granship, Shizouka Arts Centre, Japan (1999); Pictura Britannica, Art from Britain, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (1997); British Art Show, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff (1995).
News
Home – 12 December 2020 – 2 July 2021 Curated by HS Projects,
5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WP. Open 10 – 6 am. Mon-Fri.
Kaur presents a range of work from early in her career and a major new sculpture – Overgrown House made specifically for this exhibition. She makes viewers aware of the difference between the ‘private & public’ by abruptly converting this very public space into a bedroom in a private home. The central new work is a large steel bed which upon closer inspection reveals a world of colourful creatures ‘lurking’ beneath it. These creatures are a conception of private thoughts & dreams, giving viewers a sense of domestic insecurities & vulnerabilities.
Exhibition Site
Breaking The Mould: Sculpture by Women Since 1945 – 29 May – 5 Sept 2021. Open at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. An Arts Council Touring exhibition. Breaking the Mould is the first extensive survey of post-war British sculpture by artists identifying as women in a public institution. Spanning more than seventy years and exploring the work of fifty sculptors, this exhibition provides a radical recalibration, addressing the many accounts of British sculpture that have marginalised women or airbrushed their work out of the art historical canon altogether and includes sculptors such as Phyllida Barlow, Rachel Whiteread, Holly Hendry, Sarah Lucas, Veronica Ryan, Anthea Hamilton, Cornelia Parker and Rana Begum to name just a few.
Exhibition Site
A Very Special Place: Ikon in the 90’s – 18 June – 30 August 2021, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK.
The fourth in a series of surveys of Ikon’s artistic programme, this exhibition is a review of the 1990s. Comprising work by artists who featured in exhibitions and other projects at the gallery in John Bright Street during the period 1989-1997 and then at Ikon’s current premises in Brindleyplace until 1999.
Exhibition Site
Home – Review by Piers Masterson for This Is Tomorrow, Feb 26th 2021
Review
‘I am careful not to offer answers’. Interview with Michal Boncza, Morning Star, Feb 6-7, 2021
Morning Star interview
Aesthetica Future Now Symposium 2021, April 31st, 18.15-19.15. Breaking the Mould: Women Sculptors Since 1945 with Natalie Rudd, Rana Begum, Holly Hendry. Led by Hollie Trusted
Online Symposium
Artist Permindar Kaur in conversation with Eddie Chambers, March 9th, 2021 for Djanogly Gallery. Available to watch for 12 months
Online Event
Permindar Kaur | Now & Then, Here & There | BAM London Conference 6-8 October 2016 Chelsea College of Arts, Clore Auditorium, Tate Britain. Permindar Kaur presents a paper on Day 2 of the Black Artists and Modernism conference.