UH Galleries is delighted to present a new body of work by highly regarded British artist Permindar Kaur. The exhibition features a dramatic new site-specific installation spanning the vast glass front of the gallery space.
Over three decades, Permindar's work has consistently explored the human condition, who we are and where we belong. Her signature polar-fleece sculptures combine the innocence of cuddly toys with an underlying threat or vulnerability. These creatures 'stand in' for us replicating the behaviours, emotions, fears, thrills and instincts with which we negotiate our lives.

Permindar's last major exhibition, Hiding Out (Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham, 2014), introduced us to a cast of reticent, withdrawn individuals, hiding and camouflaged in their environment, clearly nervous but conversely armed with copper claws or spears.

Now, in Interlopers, a single species has evolved to inhabit the gallery space, with an increasing and unrestrained self-confidence. A sleuth of black, faceless, fleece-teddies has been released. They are climbing, travelling, exploring and infesting, perhaps considering escape. Where copper elements were once possibly weapons of defence, they now aid their movement and have become the tools of control and even invasion. Over the seven-week exhibition, Permindar proposes a dynamic environment where the creatures move around, others are introduced and some escape.

This exciting new work by Permindar has been developed during an intense residency at the University of Hertfordshire, based within the School of Creative Arts. Access to research, critical thinking, new techniques and materials has informed this confident new series.

The emerging themes of travel, migration and the threshold between one world and another chime with the disrupted global experience of the refugee, migration, helplessness and empowerment. Her population of face-less teddies are trying to take control of their lives and redeem individual and collective destinies.