Gurminder Sikand

Gurminder Sikand
The Weaver of Songs
July 23rd – August 28th, 2021
Closing event with informal talk on Thursday 26th August, 7-8.30pm.

Art Review review by Andrew Bracey
Guardian online obituary
Guardian printed obituary
East Midlands CVAN piece

The Weaver of Songs is an exhibition of palimpsests completed in the past three years by Nottingham based artist Gurminder Sikand.

Traditionally, a palimpsest is a parchment designed to withstand a repeated process of inscription and erasure. Traces from this process often remain, creating an accumulating record of former content.
In these works, all executed on paper, Sikand's laborious approach to rendering and use of sandpaper and wire wool frequently breaks the surface, requiring the paper to be repaired in a technique similar to papier-mâché. Drawings are then continued and this cycle is maintained until an end point defined by the artist. Each sheet becomes saturated by the history of Sikand's mark-making, providing the ground for illustrative references to Sikand's own biography and her interests in Indian folklore, cultural symbolism and more recently body building and enhancement.

Born in 1960 in the Punjab, Sikand moved to Britain with her family at the age of ten. She graduated in Fine Art from Birmingham Polytechnic in 1983 and has regularly presented her work in many solo and group exhibitions in subsequent years at venues including the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Arnolfini, Bristol; New Art Gallery, Walsall; Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry; and the Caribbean Cultural Center/African Diaspora Institute in New York City.

In the late 1980's and 90's, Sikand was included in several pioneering group exhibitions that focussed on Black and Asian artists including Black Art: Plotting the Course, curated by Eddie Chambers; Circular Dance, Arnolfini, Bristol; and Gurminder Sikand & Sutapa Biswas, Axiom Gallery, Cheltenham.

Sikand's work resides in several museum and institutional collections including Arts Council Collection; Cartwright Hall in Bradford; Nottingham Castle; Walsall Art Gallery; Wolverhampton Museum and Art Gallery and several private collections.

Recently Sikand was included in the book: Stick to the Skin : African American and Black British Art, 1965-2015 (University of California Press) by Celeste-Marie Bernier. Other artists include Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lubaina Himid, Donald Rodney, Steve McQueen and Sonia Boyce.