Hardeep Pandhal: Inner World

13 Feb-13 Apr 2025

Overview

Hardeep Pandhal: Inner World will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in a London public gallery.

Born in Birmingham (1985) to Indian migrants and now living and working in Glasgow, Pandhal uses wall drawings, small and large-scale drawings on paper and animations to create mythical narratives that explore the complexities of contemporary culture, class, racial violence and power. Pandhal’s drawings introduce audiences to a rabble of creatures conjured and mutated from an ambitious range of sources – religion, video games, comics, mainstream music – from the Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh to black metal. This multilayered exhibition will feature a site-specific wall drawing that snakes and wraps around the entire gallery, as well as other new drawings alongside earlier work by the artist. In these, the whimsical and serious vie for attention, whilst exploring the transformative forces of migration, colonialism and cultural assimilation.

About the artist

Hardeep Pandhal received his BA from Leeds Beckett University, Leeds in 2007 and an MFA from Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow in 2013. He had a solo show at Tramway, Glasgow (2020) and at New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2019). Pandhal was the recipient of a Drawing Room Bursary Award in 2015; these Awards were designed to provide opportunities for artists based outside London to spend time in the capital, to use the gallery as a studio to take risks with their work, to carry out research and to network. His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including, most recently: New Art Gallery, Walsall (2023); British Art Show (2022-21), Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art (2020). He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award (2018) and was the recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists (2021).