Since the 1990s, Nottingham-born artist and Digswell Arts Trust Fellow, Permindar Kaur, has created sculptural objects and installations that explore the territory of cultural identity, home and belonging. She does this by apparently innocent means, invoking childhood and domestic spaces.

Little figures and animals fashioned in soft fleece resembling half-stuffed toys are the players in her game. However, these are far from sentimental trophies; the comfort of fabric is checked by the cold contours of copper and steel. Her toys are armed with claws, horns and beaks, belying their apparent vulnerability and giving them an air of comic menace. Others disappear against identically coloured or patterned backgrounds, an elaborate game of hide-and-seek perhaps, or a strategy of camouflage or self-negation? Adaption, mimicry and mirroring: strategies of integration and assimilation. In another group of works, doorways deliberately screened or blocked negate the idea of welcome or the homely.

Hiding Out is the first major exhibition of new work produced over the last ten years by an artist whose concerns with cultural exclusivity remain as pertinent as ever.

(by Neil Walker)

Friday 02 May – Sunday 15 June

Djanogly Art Gallery

http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/Exhibitions/ViewEvent.html?e=2570&c=5&d=2916

http://www.gillhedley.co.uk/txt/Permindar-Kaur.html

www.permindarkaur.com