Sometime ago I wrote briefly of the untimely passing of the artist Gurminder Sikand and recently had an opportunity to view a small, discreet retrospective of her work at Trace in Nottingham. Curated by her son Nathaniel Sikand-Youngs and partner Tim Youngs, it was a privilege to see what a talent has been taken from us. As Nathaniel’s introduction suggests although the work matured and developed over several decades some basic abilities, themes and ideas persisted down through the years.
My latest encounter with the work reacquainted me with works from my last face to face viewing with Conjurors and Giantess, both from around 2017, demonstrating her consummate drawing skills that slowly and painstakingly accrue both mark making and image formation over an extended period. This ‘pentimento’ effect is very much to the fore in these works revealing the way in which content is to a degree wrought from process itself. Gurminder herself referred to these works as palimpsestic – another perhaps better way of describing the way in which her working practice reveals the alterations and changes as part of a process reformulation.
The imagery changes a little over the years too. Earlier works are full of joy not least in the full use of colour, using pastel, gouache and watercolour, though there is to my eye always a more disquieting voice at work just under the surface. As Nathaniel points out the relationship of women to nature is pretty much a constant throughout the works in colour but later where it is virtually pushed out the themes become more personal and demanding of the viewer.
It would be criminal not to underline how beautiful these works are, the natural understanding of technical skills with the various media, the intuitive understanding of sources of imagery, and the way in which the artist manipulates them. Also in play is a sophisticated understanding of her heritage and her place in contemporary society and the uses to which these might be put in service to a very personal and yet universal ‘message’. It is perhaps the subtlety of Sikand’s work that has, in an art world in thrall to the clearcut, prevented her work from being better known until now. It is pleasing to note that, although belatedly, that is now changing. Sitting at the centre of this carefully constructed discussion of her work is an untitled self portrait, a rarity it seems, that looks out on the chronologically assembled pictures. In it I thought I detected a knowingness that her work, like those so often depicted in it, (and as Nathaniel’s introduction puts it) shows ‘how women by nature are strong’.
Plainly Painting - David Manley 