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Not Only, But Also: Permindar Kaur’s Ambiguous Sculptures at John Hansard Gallery
We travel to Southampton for the artist's latest exhibition of anthropomorphism-meets-furniture...
August 22, 2024
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
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It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
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Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
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Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
There has often been a disconnect between the places of Permindar Kaur’s artistic production, and the context of their display. Recent exhibitions have fixated on domestic subjects; ‘I want to make art about other parts of my life too’, she has remarked, whilst working back-and-forth with nursery rhymes, beds, and teddy bears, first toyed with in the 1990s.
Nothing is Fixed has grown from Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield, a generative experience which encouraged their first foray into screen printing, and the recommissioning of their titular sculpture for a new Sculpture Park at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. In Southampton, Kaur brings together the public and the private, perceiving the various gallery spaces as bedrooms of a home. Here, the beds for which she is best known are put to the corner, displaced with new works. Anthropomorphic chairs circle and huddle in conspiratorial clusters, or strut through the gallery space, leading to Kaur’s first public presentation of works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in sculptural practice.
It culminates in Kaur’s Hunting Chair (2024), a new commission reserved for John Hansard’s most interesting gallery space. Looking out over the city of Southampton, this exaggerated, semi-public sculpture provokes so many different questions. Who might occupy such a seat of power? In its empty state, does the chair itself work as a monument, much like the plinth of a toppled statue? And from this great height, who is at risk of falling? Those standing on the other side of the two-way glass would instead see a colourful reproduction of one of Kaur’s textile works. As with their previous exhibition of Pia Arke, the window thus creates another conversation between inside and outside, which encourages us to consider who is welcome in a white cube, and society more widely.
Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Kaur is often exhibited - and almost exclusively interpreted - in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, including by members of Blk Art Group. This neglects their, and wider, interactions with the likes of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a binary imposed retroactively which limits our understanding of the time. As a contemporary practising artist, Kaur still welcomes seeing existing works from this period put in new contexts beyond identity alone, including a recent group exhibition supported by Griselda Pollock.
On the EMPIRE LINES podcast, she shares influences from formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, and Sweden. They vary from Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, to Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside Arte Povera and Spanish public artworks. Working in these contexts, Kaur became aware of how much they were a ‘product of a 1980s British arts education’, noticing the different approaches of Spanish and Catalan artists in their circles.
Kaur’s career only reflects the local and global influences entangled within any individual’s practice. It was during the same residency at Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, that Helen Chadwick produced Piss Flowers (1991 1992), now rooted near Kaur’s Overgrown House (2020) at Compton Verney alongside Louise Bourgeois, another strong influence on the artist’s early practice.
A deeper understanding of the ‘otherness’ embedded in Kaur’s story and storytelling can provide different perspectives on national identities. At John Hansard Gallery, the largest walls are covered by their Camouflage series (2012-2024), perhaps hinting at questions of representation and visibility. It is, still, surprising to find none of the artist’s works with snap poppers here, moveable sculptures which embody their interest in the fixing, unfixing, and changing of positions.
Speaking with the British School in Rome - a connection forged by Barbara Walker, another artist with roots in the Midlands - Kaur refers to her hometown of Nottingham as ’in the centre of the UK’, a geographically-accurate statement delivered with double meaning. Intergenerational conversations have deepened the artist’s own understandings of other diasporic histories, practices, and communities. They vary, with artists including Jasleen Kaur and Alia Syed, who share unexpected connections with Glasgow, Jala Wahid, another John Hansard alum, and Roo Dissou, selected by Kaur, Liz Johnson Artur, and Amalia Pica for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.
Alongside a second, more site-specific commission for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival - a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for different South Asian cultures - Nothing is Fixed is a suitably ambiguous title. It is both a statement and a proposition, which hints at how instability is not only a negative force but something with potential to unsettle assumptions past and present.
Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed is on view at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 7 September 2024. An exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, launches on the final day.
Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presents work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and The Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until 1 September 2024.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.
Listen and follow the EMPIRE LINES podcast for a conversation with Permindar Kaur, coming soon.
