Visitors to Wolverhampton Art Gallery have the opportunity to see a new exhibition by leading British sculptor & installation artist Permindar Kaur this October.

Taking the title Dread Naught, the show provides a first chance to check out Permindar’s new commissions while also reflecting on some of the pieces she’s created during a career spanning more than 30 years.

“Visitors can expect to see a lot of new work that has been made in the last year,” says Permindar. “For me, it’s a new form and a new way, and when my work moves forward a step, it’s quite exciting.

“I’m also showing some work from before, which I don’t normally show; some very early works from the early 1990s. I think something that is interesting about my work is that when you see an older work, you wouldn’t know it was an older work; you can’t tell the age.

“It’s interesting to show them because it helps the dialogue with the newer work, and it gives another level of what the work is about. You see the same themes but being approached in different ways. I’m not showing the works chronologically; it’s mixed in.”

Born in Nottingham to Sikh parents, Permindar has exhibited across the UK and abroad, including at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, Coventry’s Mead Gallery, The New Art Gallery in Walsall and Compton Verney in Warwickshire. Her work was recently included in the major Arts Council Collection touring exhibition Breaking The Mould: Sculpture By Women Since 1945, which opened at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Using a blend of metals and materials, Permindar often takes familiar shapes and re-interprets them through her sculpture and installation.

“Throughout my works, I’ve looked at different ways of defence and protection. So in some of my early works, I used chainmail and knives, which are quite symbolic to Sikhism, and swords and boots and helmets. So basic armour to represent personal defence.

“Then, later on, that moved to more animal hybrid protection - so antlers, claws and beaks. So my figures became hybrid creations of animals and humans. When I look back through my career, I can see that defence and protection is a theme that is consistent, although it might go in different directions.”

Permindar often infuses her art with ambiguity. An example of this is Copper Giants. Exhibited for the first time in Wolverhampton, it features outline figures wearing only boots, thereby blending the familiar and the strange.

“The figures are made out of copper rod and are quite skeletal and quite big. Originally, they were dressed. They were the inside structures of some of my fabric figures, but now the fabric has come off and the only clothing they have is their metal black boots. So they are more naked, and it’s just revealing the skeletal, what’s left after a life.

“The figures are quite strange, because they have broad shoulders and small heads, so they look like monsters in some ways. But they are also quite comical. And so people are left thinking, are they threatening or are they humorous? People will have very different responses to them.”

Dread Naught is Permindar’s largest exhibition of new work to date and is also her first at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. She is suitably excited by the opportunities the building provides: “Wolverhampton is such a fascinating space because it has a triangular gallery. I’ve never worked with a triangular gallery before, and as a sculptor, I like to respond to the space if I can. I wanted the four figures of Copper Giants in the centre, so it’s like a square inside the triangle. And when you enter the space, you see all the walls, so it’s a different feeling.”

Also in the exhibition, Permindar has returned to one of her first works - Innocence - which features a child’s dress and a kirpan, the Sikh ceremonial knife. The original work is in the Arts Council Collection.

“I asked the Arts Council, who own the work, but because they have been moving their collection and this is the critical stage, they’re not loaning out at the moment. But I wanted Innocence in the exhibition. It’s a key work that I made in 1993 which has lots of levels and layers [illustrating] what my work is about. It has Sikh reference, it has childhood, it has defence, it has the female aspect. It talks about so much, and it would help as a start work into the show, which is then in dialogue with it.

“So I re-made it, which is something I don’t tend to do. It’s a new version: Innocence II, for 2026. It’s very similar in lots of ways, but the materials are slightly different.

“It’s raised lots of questions in my mind, even making it. I thought I would make a different version of it, but I kept going back to the original because I liked the original. So I realised that all those decisions I made all those years ago, I didn’t want to change them, as it works as it is.”

The final room of the exhibition features Market Stall, bringing together pieces by three local artists: Kanj Nicholas, India Birtwistle and Roo Dhissou. The artists have been working with Wolverhampton community groups the Sikh & Punjabi Women’s Group, Wolverhampton Girl Guides and Wolverhampton City of Sanctuary.

Permindar has been in frequent contact with all of the artists and groups.

“The theme is about market stalls and the way we connect, so in the final gallery there will be four market stalls - my market stall and the three from the local artists and different communities.

“I think it’s important to work with younger artists, to have this dialogue and to open up the exhibition. I’m a very studio-based artist. I’m on my own, and it’s good to have these dialogues, to talk to people and learn about what they do. I loved hearing the stories of the artists working with the communities.”

Within this final space, Permindar has created Teddy Bear Wallpaper, featuring outline teddies which visitors are invited to colour in.

“This final gallery is going to be more of an interactive, fun and joyful space. It will be quite an experience going through my show and then going to the market stalls and coming to something completely different.

“If someone colours it in, then they are a part of it. I’m really excited to see what they do with the teddies and how they colour them in or write words. That engagement is interesting because the wallpaper is the outline of these black teddies that I make, and it’s seeing how people see these forms and respond to them.”

Visitor reaction is an important element of Permindar’s practice.

“I always want people to have some sort of emotional response to my work. I use such basic and generic forms, and because I do that, it’s quite open for people to have a response to, or for them to imagine what they think the figures are and what they represent.

“I don’t want the work to be closed off and didactic and say it’s about this or that. But also the work has complexity, so it can be read in different ways. I’m always trying to create this balance in my work, where you don’t know how to feel. There are boundaries and you don’t know which side to be on.”

Permindar Kaur Dread Naught shows at Wolverhampton Art Gallery from Saturday 24 October to Sunday 11 April 2027

By Diane Parkes