Gurminder Sikand
b. 1960, India
d. 2021
Born in 1960 in the Punjab region of India, Sikand relocated with her family in 1970 aged 10 and eventually settled in the Rhondda valley in South Wales. She attended City of Birmingham Polytechnic and upon graduating in 1983 moved to Nottingham, where she lived, worked, and was deeply active in the arts community for close to 40 years. After being selected by Gavin Jantjes as the East Midlands Arts Prize winner in 1984, she co-founded the Nottingham Indian Artists’ Group alongside Said Adrus and Sardul Gill. In 1987, she had her first solo exhibition in London at the pioneering feminist bookshop Sisterwrite. In 1988, she was included in Eddie Chambers’ foundational touring group exhibition Black Art: Plotting the Course, and her painting featured on the cover of that catalogue. Sikand’s work was included in other significant exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s including The Circular Dance at Arnolfini, Bristol, alongside Sutapa Biswas and Chila Kumari Burman (1991); Myth, Dream, and Fable at Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, alongside Paula Rego and Eileen Cooper (1992); and Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996 at the Caribbean Cultural Center, New York, alongside Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, and Keith Piper, amongst many others (1997). She exhibited less after 2000, although her commitment to her practice remained absolute. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have taken place at New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2012); TG Gallery, Nottingham (2021); and Trace Gallery, Nottingham (2023). Since Sikand’s death in 2021, her work has been acquired by collections including the British Museum, London; Nottingham City Museums via the Contemporary Art Society; and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich.