About
Permindar Kaur’s artistic practice extends over more than three decades, during which time she has become one of Britain’s most original and innovative practitioner’s working in sculpture. Known as much for her deft manipulation of materials including glass, metal, and colourful fabrics, as for her evocative explorations of home, childhood and personal recollections, Kaur’s work nevertheless defies easy categorization. Often deploying familiar forms derived from intimate worlds of domestic life, Kaur’s sculpture is however, to some degree, analogous to the realm of the fairytale. With its fusion of the real and the imaginary, distortions of scale and form, Kaur’s practice expounds a remarkable, even magical world. In its assemblage of familial and unfamiliar motifs, Kaur’s work is at once alluring and contemplative, quizzical and sometimes baleful. With its an unerring capacity for exploring and experimenting through various forms of ciphers, Kaur’s prodigious practice is an unremitting force in creative invention. One that inspires us to bring our own memories and recollections to bear on her inimitable domain of the strangely familiar. (Richard Hylton)
Permindar Kaur is a British artist born in Nottingham to Sikh parents. Kaur is celebrated for her striking use of domestic and toylike forms coming to prominence in the 1990s. At that time, Kaur was loosely associated with both the YBA and Black British Art movements.
Kaur solo exhibitions include Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, UK (2026); Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London, UK (2025) Lightbox, Woking, UK (2025); Frieze No 9 Cork Street, London, UK (2025); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2024); Niru Ratnam Gallery, London, UK (2023); ArtHouse, Wakefield, UK (2022); New Art Projects, London, UK (2017); Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, UK (2014); Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Nottingham, UK (1998); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (1996); Mead Gallery, Warwick, UK (1996); Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, UK (1993).
Significant group exhibitions in the UK and internationally include The Box, Plymouth (2026 & 2022); Compton Verney, Warwickshire (2024/27); Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2023); Yorkshire Sculpture Park ( 2021 & 2017); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2021 & 1998); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2018); Tate Gallery, London, UK (2000); Shizouka Arts Centre, Japan (1999); Hakata Riverain, Fukuoka, Japan (1999); Art Tower Mito, Mito, Japan (1997); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK (1997); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (1997); Queens Museum of Art, New York, USA (1997); University Museum of Ethnography, Oslo, Norway (1997); Caribbean Cultural Centre, New York, USA (1996); British Art Show 4, Manchester, Cardiff & Edinburgh, UK (1995); La Capella, Barcelona, Spain (1994); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (1992); BBC Billboard Art Project, Glasgow, UK (1992); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (1991).
Photo © Brian Benson
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News
Dread Naught
24 October 2026 – 28 February 2027
Wolverhampton Art Gallery presents Permindar Kaur: Dread Naught, an exhibition of newly commissioned sculptures and important historic works by one of Britian’s most innovative sculptors. Dread Naught is Kaur’s largest show of new work to date, and features newly commissioned monumental figures formed from copper, as well as several pieces from her early career, including a remake of Innocence (1993/2026), now in the Arts Council Collection. More info here: Wolverhampton Art Gallery
The Way We Live
24 October 2026 – 21 February 2027
This ambitious exhibition developed with external curator Beth Hughes will consider the implications of planner Patrick Abercrombie and Plymouth City Engineer and Surveyor James Paton Watson’s ‘A Plan for Plymouth’ (1943) which outlined ideas for the rebuilding of the city after The Blitz, and Jill Craigie’s film The Way We Live (1946) which shows family life in post-war Plymouth. Both address the shared themes of community, inequality, access to housing, education and healthcare and visions for the future.
More Info: The Box, Plymouth
Sculpture in the Park, 19 Mar 2024 – May 2027. Compton Verney, Warwickshire.
A major new sculpture park will open in the grounds, with works by eight contemporary artists drawn from around the world. The sculpture park will include works from leading UK-based artists such as Sarah Lucas (b.1962), Permindar Kaur (b.1965), British-Ghanian artist Larry Achiampong (b.1984), London-based French artist Nicolas Deshayes (b.1983), Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas (b.1990), French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), British artist Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) and a new commission by Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti (b.1971).
More info: Compton Verney
Recent Past
Artist Talk – Permindar Kaur: Strange Bedfellows, Wed 28 Jan 2026, – 22 February 2026 Lightbox, Woking. Discover the extraordinary sculptural world of acclaimed British artist Permindar Kaur in this special lunchtime talk. Known for her unsettling yet playful use of domestic objects—beds, toys, chairs—Kaur will discuss her exhibition Strange Bedfellows, which explores the complex interplay of childhood, conflict, and identity. Kaur’s work is renowned for its ability to be both disarming and deeply contemplative. This is a rare opportunity to hear the artist reflect on her distinctive practice, her longstanding fascination with home and strangeness, and how she has brought these themes into dialogue with iconic works from The Ingram Collection.
Lightbox, Woking
Strange Bedfellows, 15 November – 22 February 2026. Lightbox, Woking. Discover the imaginative and forceful work of Permindar Kaur alongside selected work from The Ingram Collection. Permindar Kaur is a significant figure in contemporary British art, known for her whimsical and thought-provoking sculptural installations staged in major solo, group, and touring exhibitions across the UK and internationally.
Lightbox, Woking
Mirror, Mirror. 27 June – 21 September 2025, Pitzhanger Gallery, London
Mirror, Mirror is the largest solo presentation of Permindar Kaur’s work in a London institution to date and will take place across the main gallery and the historic manor. Kaur’s installations use a visual language of toys, clothing, and shelter to explore how domestic settings shape individuals, and how identity and background relates to these things.
More info: Pitzhanger Gallery
Staying with the ambivalence: an interview with Permindar Kaur, by Alina Khakoo, 26 Feb 2025. Published on ArtUK. Permindar Kaur (b.1965) is a sculptor known for her exploration of material and conceptual ambivalences. Since arriving on the British art scene at the turn of the 1990s, Kaur has paired softness with hardness, domesticity with threat, and the imposing with the invisible.
Read here: Art UK
Reflections and Doubles: Permindar Kaur and Prem Sahib at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery by Nikhil Sardana, 7 August 2025. Prem Sahib and Permindar Kaur present two compelling solo exhibitions at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, exploring themes of identity, visibility, vulnerability, and power through sculptural and spatial interventions that respond to the site’s layered histories.
Read here: Serenade Magazine
Permindar Kaur’s Chilling Yet Child-Friendly World, by Mark Rappolt. ArtReview vol 76 no 7, October 2024, pg 102. The artist conjures cartoonish monsters under the bed in an exhibition that feels less nightmarish than disarmingly cuddly.
ArtReview
Empire Lines podcast with Jelena Sofronijevica, Sept 26 2024
Artist and sculptor Permindar Kaur moves between the Black British Arts Movement, the Young British Artists (YBAs), and Barcelona in the 1990s, exploring the ambiguities of Indian and South Asian cultural identities.
Listen here: Empire Lines
Teddy bears and more – ‘Nothing is Fixed’ by Permindar Kaur at John Hansard Gallery – by Urvi Kothari. Aug 10, 2024 published on Stir World. Using everyday objects as a tool for introspection, the visual artist’s solo show explores fundamental issues such as home, migration, identity and safety. Read here: Stir World
Nothing is Fixed, Art Monthly no. 478, July – August 2024 – by Amna Malik. A fur-covered frame faces me, a metal claw protrudes from within, a sign nearby instructs the viewer ‘Please do not touch’, which, oddly, is just what this work entices us to do.
Read here: Amna Malik, Nothing is Fixed
Permindar Kaur: Artlyst Interview of the Month June 2024 – Paul Carey-Kent
Permindar Kaur’s thirty-year career survey at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, is titled ‘Nothing is Fixed’. As that suggests, her work maintains ambiguity between possible interpratations, leaving the viewer to decide. Kaur divides the show into five distinct spaces: what you might call ‘the wall of hiding’, ‘the room of rooms’, ‘the bedroom’, ‘the hunting zome’ and ‘black teddy world’.
Read here: Artlyst
Nothing is Fixed, 8 June–7 September 2024, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
Permindar Kaur is a sculptor and installation artist who utilises familiar forms, such as furniture and toys, to create displaced domestic belongings and settings that invoke the uncanny. Transforming John Hansard Gallery into an immersive set of installations, Nothing is Fixed explores fundamental issues of home, belonging, care and safety. Kaur focuses on the intersectionality of identity; how society, family and education inform unique combinations of discrimination and privilege.
Nothing Is Fixed JHG
All work © Permindar Kaur 2026