Gurminder Sikand was born in Jamshedpur, India in 1960. Her family moved to the UK in 1970, after which she studied at Cardiff College of Art and Design and City of Birmingham Polytechnic. Sikand was widely involved in exhibitions pioneering the work of Black and Asian artists in Britain in the 1980s–90s.
Gurminder Sikand was born in Jamshedpur, India in 1960. She spent her childhood in Kasauli, a hill station in Himachal Pradesh, but in 1970 her family relocated to the UK where her parents both worked for the NHS. Following spells in north Wales and northern England, they finally settled in the Rhondda valley in south Wales. Sikand attended Tonyrefail comprehensive school, after which she took a foundation course at Cardiff College of Art and Design (1979–80) and then a fine art degree at the City of Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University), where she met her future husband, Tim Youngs. After graduating in 1983, Sikand moved with Youngs to Nottingham, where, supported by East Midlands Arts, and given opportunities by several individuals and institutions, her career began to take off. In 1984, Sikand’s painting, Festival of Fools, was selected by Gavin Jantjes as the East Midlands Arts prize-winner, and she co-founded the Nottingham Indian Artists’ Group with Said Adrus and Sardul Gill. One of the group’s activities was an exhibition Three Asian Artists held at the Commonwealth Institute, London in 1985 (Youngs, 2022).
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sikand was involved in many artist residencies, particularly at schools in the Midlands, Cardiff, Sheffield and Manchester, as well as the Castle Museum, Nottingham (1986), Ipswich Museum & Art Gallery (1989), and the University of Nottingham (1993–94). At this time, she participated in several solo and group exhibitions that pioneered the exposure of Black and Asian artists. Solo shows included Myth, Moon and Muslin at Mansfield Community Arts Centre (1986), Artists Showcase at the Castle Museum, Nottingham (1987), Avatars of Power at the Flaxman Gallery, Staffordshire Polytechnic (1989) and Paintings and Drawings by Gurminder Sikand at Derby Museum and Art Gallery (1992). A significant group show was Black Art: Plotting the Course, curated by Eddie Chambers in collaboration with Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, Oldham Art Gallery and Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1989. Sikand’s works in this survey included Chipko I and Chipko II, illustrating her interest in the strength of women who protested during the Indian forest conservation movement of the same name (Bracey, 2021; Chambers, 1989). She was also known for her self-portraits. The following year, Sikand was among 57 artists brought together in Chambers’ Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces at the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry and touring (1990), which explored the links between self-portraiture, self-identity and the Black community (Chambers, 1990). Other significant survey exhibitions included Fine Material for a Dream? at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston and touring (1992) and Transforming the Crown: African, Asian an Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996 held at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts and Caribbean Cultural Center in New York City, USA (1997–98). In 1992, Sikand exhibited alongside Paula Rego, Amanda Faulkner and Eileen Cooper in Myth, Dream and Fable at Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham. In 1993, she held a solo show Samsara at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, as part of the South Asian Contemporary Visual Arts Festival; directed by Juginder Lamba to showcase the work of over 50 sculptors, painters, photographers, craftworkers and multimedia artists of South Asian origin in gallery spaces across the West Midlands. The Festival provided ‘an opportunity for audiences to explore the vital and ever-changing relationship which exists between the artistic traditions of the Sub-Continent and fine art practice in Britain today’ (SADAA, 1993). Sikand’s subsequent solo shows included Wonderings in Paint, University of Nottingham (1994), Creative Journeys, Huddersfield Museum and Art Gallery (1994) and Maidens, Trees and Deities, Walsall Museum and Art Gallery (1995).
Sikand exhibited sparingly after 2000, though she remained committed to her practice. She had a solo show Palimpsest of Desire at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham in 2012 and participated in the group exhibition The Movement of the Line at the Lace Market Gallery in 2015. She had a two-person show with Sardul Gill, Breaking Boundaries, at Harrington Mill Studios, Long Eaton in 2017. Her final solo exhibition The Weaver of Songs was held at TG Gallery, Nottingham in 2021, for which she produced palimpsests that had taken three years to produce, ‘their surfaces scratched away and pasted over in acts of erasure and remaking’ (Youngs, 2022). Sikand’s drawings from this show were described in Art Review as encouraging ‘a rich complexity of possible narratives’, being ‘at once precise and open’ (Bracey, 2021).
Sikand’s works are held in a number of UK public collections, including the Arts Council, Nottingham City Council, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Now attracting considerable interest from a new generation of curators, Sikand's paintings have been selected for inclusion in two major group shows at Tate Britain and Barbican, opening in London in late 2023.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gurminder Sikand]
Publications related to [Gurminder Sikand] in the Ben Uri Library