‘Permindar Kaur works on the boundaries of recognition. Her symbolic vocabulary is consistently suggestive; never fixed. While we are disarmed by the components of her architecture, the physical presence and threat implied by her work distances the viewer while inviting a closer examination. Physically, so much of her work alerts us to a danger. The search for, and transcendence of, a current identity is clearly important for the artist. Her own origins are ambiguously placed between the East Midlands and the Punjab. However it would be well not to artificially limit her art to a purely racial or cultural question. The important dynamic of Kaur's work is that it questions our being-in-the-world. It is the presence of the unanswered, essentially difficult question (both social and ontological) which Kaur raises. As we dwell on all these (dysfunctional?) objects to hand (distanced by glass, density of sound, coldness of touch), we are thrown into an essentially problematic relationship with our history, facticity and ultimately, identity. It is this complexity in the work that denies any theatricality; any display. The dialogue discloses our own discomfort. It is here that the sense of threat lies; not just in the notion of difference, of otherness. For this reason Kaur is not an activist artist. Her work is not political protestation. Rather solitude and disquiet are the essential elements, wherein lies a basis for understanding. Tom Eccles.’

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‘Permindar Kaur works on the boundaries of recognition. Her symbolic vocabulary is consistently suggestive; never fixed. While we are disarmed by the components of her architecture, the physical presence and threat implied by her work distances the viewer while inviting a closer examination. Physically, so much of her work alerts us to a danger. The search for, and transcendence of, a current identity is clearly important for the artist. Her own origins are ambiguously placed between the East Midlands and the Punjab. However it would be well not to artificially limit her art to a purely racial or cultural question. The important dynamic of Kaur's work is that it questions our being-in-the-world. It is the presence of the unanswered, essentially difficult question (both social and ontological) which Kaur raises. As we dwell on all these (dysfunctional?) objects to hand (distanced by glass, density of sound, coldness of touch), we are thrown into an essentially problematic relationship with our history, facticity and ultimately, identity. It is this complexity in the work that denies any theatricality; any display. The dialogue discloses our own discomfort. It is here that the sense of threat lies; not just in the notion of difference, of otherness. For this reason Kaur is not an activist artist. Her work is not political protestation. Rather solitude and disquiet are the essential elements, wherein lies a basis for understanding. Tom Eccles.’