Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery – Permindar Kaur: Mirror,Mirror
Mirror, Mirror is the largest solo presentation of Permindar Kaur’s work in a London institution to date and will take place across the main gallery and the historic manor. Kaur’s installations use a visual language of toys, clothing, and shelter to explore how domestic settings shape individuals, and how identity and background relates to these things.
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Ealing, London: Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery is excited to announce the pairing of British artists Permindar Kaur and Prem Sahib in site-specific presentations of new and existing sculptural works across the galleries, manor, and gardens of architect Sir John Soane’s former home. Whilst Kaur’s exhibition Mirror, Mirror, will expand from the contemporary gallery spaces into the rooms of the historic manor, Sahib’s major new bronze sculpture in Pitzhanger’s gardens will be the starting point for Doubles, a series of interventions in the manor.
This is the first time that the artists have responded directly to a heritage setting, and with the experience of architecture central to their practices here they relate specifically to Sir John Soane, a master at casting and recasting materials, and deploying trompe l’oeil to suggest one thing is another. Both artists embrace this legacy, investigating similar themes of doubles, reflections and (a)symmetry. Their works suggest the familiar and the strange, Sahib drawing on personal and political histories of the surrounding area, and Kaur exploring the territory of childhood.
Permindar Kaur: Mirror, Mirror
Mirror, Mirror is the largest solo presentation of Permindar Kaur’s work in a London institution to date. Her installations use toys, clothing, and shelter to explore how domestic settings shape individuals, and how identity and background relate to these things. Child-like figures equipped with claws, horns, or beaks haunt the gallery like sentinels or misfits, suggesting protection, defiance or both. Drawing on cultural symbolism, including ceremonial Sikh colours such as saffron and blue, her works camouflage Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery Trust Mattock Lane, Ealing Green, London W5 5EQ www.pitzhanger.org.uk pitzhanger@pitzhanger.org.uk 020 3985 8888 Charity Registration: 1152434 Company Registration: 08278049
themselves whilst simultaneously asserting their presence. Throughout, motifs suggesting a high society country house — such as pairs of antlers — are set against felt, fleece or richly patterned fabrics, refer to the safety of a childhood comfort blanket or cuddly toy as well as the underlying realities of everyday life.
Kaur will insert new and existing works into the historic interiors of the manor, to bring a heightened dialogue between the home of Soane’s day and now — introducing familiarity and uneasiness equally. Her interventions reference hierarchy and status, reflected in Soane’s architecture and design. Chameleon-like figures will appear to morph and merge into the eighteenth century fabric of the building — at once interlopers and guests.
Mirror, Mirror presents new and previously unseen commissions such as Threshold (2025), a ceremonial arch comprised of symbolic knives and fluffy balls, and Washing Line Beds (2024), an installation of black steel bed frames overhung with washing lines of brightly coloured garments. In evoking the character of the mirror in Snow White, Kaur points to childhood as a key site of identity formation to ask who is the truth-telling voice in the mirror, and where does it come from?
Permindar Kaur said: “I feel honoured to have been invited by Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery to show ‘Mirror, Mirror’. This exhibition marks both my first major solo exhibition in London and the first opportunity I have had to place my work in a stately home. The setting has offered me interesting possibilities to locate my work within both a gallery and a traditional domestic setting, aligning strongly with my continuing interest in ‘Home’.”
Prem Sahib: Doubles
Responding to the unveiling of their first major public sculpture in the grounds of Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, Prem Sahib presents Doubles, a succession of site-specific responses inhabiting the rooms and spaces of the historic building.
Apotropaic 2 (2025) is a new sculpture that will be sited in the front gardens of the manor and mirrors an earlier work Apotropaic 1 (2023), housed inside the building. Both sculptures — one cast in bronze and the other made from fabric — are of a pair of suspended hooded sweatshirts, one hovering above the other in an ambiguous embrace, perhaps one of tenderness or protection.
Doubles brings together objects and sculptural interventions from the last decade or so of Sahib’s practice to reference meaningful local public spaces and events. Some works evoke memories of former buildings and past encounters in neighbouring Walpole Park, and others explore the idea of a copy or replica in performance, memory, deception and perceived threat to destabilise. Questions of mimicry, marginalisation, and queer desire will suffuse Pitzhanger to question who belongs, who is seen and heard in museums and civic spaces.
Front (2017) is Sahib’s architectural re-rendering of a window from a public toilet that once stood in the park now transposed to an interior room of the manor. Another installation Archive (2019), brings narratives from the local area inside: a display of letters, newspaper clippings and other ephemera from the archive of Sahib’s uncle, a race equality campaigner during the 1980s in Southall. At night, a light installation, Liquid Gold (2016), will illuminate the manor in bright yellow, turning the building into Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery Trust Mattock Lane, Ealing Green, London W5 5EQ www.pitzhanger.org.uk pitzhanger@pitzhanger.org.uk 020 3985 8888 Charity Registration: 1152434 Company Registration: 08278049
a beacon. In September, the installation will be joined by another light beacon in a building of importance to Southall’s history of community action.
Prem Sahib said: “The works I am bringing together are unified by a deep connection to the surrounding area — sometimes focusing on seemingly fleeting details like a reflection, and other times, with weightier histories and biographical underpinnings — a double-take on the emotional residues embedded within a place.”
Richard Parry, Head of Public Programmes at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, said: “We are thrilled to be presenting the work of two outstanding sculptors across the entirety of the manor and galleries this summer. The exhibitions by Permindar Kaur and Prem Sahib each speak to the theme of doubles and converse with the legacy of Sir John Soane here at Pitzhanger. Both invite visitors into the artists’ worlds and to reimagine the extraordinary architecture of Soane in new ways that are at once inspiring, relatable and at times unsettling.”
Mirror, Mirror is supported by a National Lottery Project Grant from Arts Council England.
Prem Sahib’s outdoor bronze work Apotropaic 2 is made possible by funding from the Frampton Fund