Fabrica

What’s On
Archive
Opportunities
Learning & Communities
Hire
Visit
About
Shop
Contact

Art Archive

Opportunities

Comfort of Little Places

Permindar Kaur

Archive Exhibitions (12 September to 18 October 1998)

With dangerously high beds and miniscule doll-like figures, Fabrica’s 1998 exhibition Comfort of Little Places looked like a strange scene from a fairytale – or a disturbing dream.

Artist Permindar Kaur recreated her critically acclaimed installation Comfort of Little Places at Fabrica. Tall, stark beds were constructed to stand far above visitors heads, with steel legs 3 metres high. Toy-like cloth figures, clothed in armour, were fixed to walls like trophies or placed in intimate corners of the gallery where they had to searched out.

Kaur makes objects that have their sources in domestic settings or childhood – beds, cots, dolls and dolls clothing – yet there is something in their scale or construction which is haunting.

About The Artist

Permindar Kaur is a sculpture/ installation artist, whose approach to art is playful, using childlike objects to explore the territory of cultural identity, home and belonging. She uses simple forms, for instance furniture (beds, cots and chairs) and toys (soft, brightly coloured figures, trucks and animal forms). These objects resemble displaced domestic belongings, which have been distorted and manipulated to invoke the uncanny. They are deceptively familiar in their appearance and initially might remind the viewer of innocence, childhood and play belying their sinister undertones.

Kaur has exhibited internationally; major solo exhibitions include Home, 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG (2020-21); Interlopers, University of Hertfordshire (2016); Hiding Out, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts (2014); Untitled, Berwick Gymnasium Art Gallery, Berwick (1999) and Cold Comfort, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Mead Gallery, Coventry (1996).

Major group exhibition include Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945 (2021) YSP & UK tour; Ikon in the 90’s, Ikon Gallery (2021); Animals & Us, Turner Contemporary (2018); A Vision of Utopia, Spirella Building, Letchworth (2014); At Home with Art, Tate Britain, London and touring (2000); Hot Air, Granship, Shizouka Arts Centre, Japan (1999); Pictura Britannica, Art from Britain, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (1997); British Art Show, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff (1995). Permindar Kaur completed her MA at Glasgow School of Art, she lives and works in the UK.