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 Home, 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG (2020-21); Interlopers, University of Hertfordshire (2016); Hiding Out, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts (2014); Untitled, Berwick Gymnasium Art Gallery, Berwick (1999) and Cold Comfort, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Mead Gallery, Coventry (1996).

Major group exhibition include Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945 (2021-23) YSP & UK tour; Ikon in the 90’s, Ikon Gallery (2021);  Animals & Us, Turner Contemporary (2018); A Vision of Utopia, Spirella Building, Letchworth (2014); At Home with Art, Tate Britain, 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). Permindar Kaur completed her MA at Glasgow School of Art, she lives and works in the UK.

Kaur has taken part in a number of talks at leading institutions including at the Tate, Ikon Gallery and Lakeside Arts.
Visit the Talks page

Full CV

Shortlisted for Freelands Award 2022.
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, will present a landmark exhibition by Permindar Kaur in summer 2024, including a range of her distinctive playful handmade sculptures, that resemble domestic objects and huggable toys. Small steel figures and welded furniture explore the heightened anxiety and power dynamics of public and private space.
Freelands Foundation

Permindar Kaur – interview with Hettie Judah, Sept 16 2022, Studio International
“It’s hard to get a balance in the work: an equal amount of threat and an equal amount of softness’. The sculptor talks to us about her playful use of the domestic realm to explore feelings of belonging and cultural identity.
Watch here: Studio International

OutGrown, 3 Sept – 13 Nov 2022. The Art House, Wakefield.
Launching at the start of September, Outgrown explores Kaur’s ongoing investigation into ‘where is home?’ and includes work spanning four decades. The gallery will be converted into a private domestic space, filled with minimalistic sculptures and colourful creatures; playing with the conception of dreams and personal thoughts being made public.
More info here: The ArtHouse

Offsite project, 28 Sept -13 Nov 2022. Wakefield Cathedral.
During a residency this summer at TAH, Kaur worked with two local artists, Ranya Abdulateef and Ifa Mesfin Abebe, to further explore concepts of the home, who we are and where we belong, and co-create a new work, Dream Runner (2022) for display in Wakefield Cathedral. Informed by workshops with local groups – and supported by The Art House in its role as the UK’s first Studio of Sanctuary. The work invites us to consider if the egg or cocoon-like form is protecting the would-be sleeper inside, or a cage or menacing creature that could consume the person who dares enter. Together, the artists invite us to consider contrasting notions of home across the world and raise questions about the privileges of safety and sanctuary.
More info here: The ArtHouse – Offsite

Overgrown House Limited Edition Screen Print for ArtHouse.
Overgrown House (2022) is the first screen printed edition created by artist Permindar Kaur. The print is based on a three-metre-tall sculpture of the same title, created in 2020. The sculpture Overgrown House is a black steel abandoned house, with growing ‘vines’ sprouting from the ground, consuming or reclaiming the structure.
Shop – ArtHouse

Breaking The Mould: Sculpture by Women Since 1945, 2 July – 2 October 2022. Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. 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, and Cornelia Parker.
Ferens Art Gallery

Permindar Kaur: Locating a ‘Black’ Artist in Narratives of British Art in the 1990s. Essay by Alice Correia for Art History, June 2021
This special issue of Art History looks closely at the multi-faceted genealogies of Black British modernism since the arrival of the ‘Windrush generation’. It brings together a range essays in different formats by artists and art historians to centralize the lack of attention paid to the material and conceptual nature of artworks made by Black British artists, and asks how a reappraisal of their work can contribute to an expanded understanding of modernism.
Read full essay here: Art History

The catalogue for HOME is now available with 21 colour images and critical texts by Dr Alice Correia and Dr Eddie Chambers. Copies are available for purchase at £10.
Email: mark@theartistsagency.co.uk The Artist Agency
Or Ikon Gallery Shop