UNSTRUCK MELODY, Nirbhai (Nep) Singh Sidhu
8 Jul–8 May, 2027
without SHAPE without FORM HQ, Slough
Unstruck Melody brings together the universal Sikh practice of transferring knowledge (Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji), focused repetition (Simran), selfless service (Seva) and community (Sangat). Large-scale tapestries, mixed-media paintings and a take-away publication are tools for visitors to activate their practice of spirituality and help them embark on a transformative journey of the mind.
The artworks derive from contemporary Sikh teachings rooted in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, a compilation of sacred texts spanning over five hundred years that contain experiences, tools and practical applications from diverse geographical heritages and lineages. The exhibition’s title is the direct translation of Anhad Shabad or Shabad Guru, the internal sound that can be heard within us all through deep listening – the access point to knowledge. By allowing the mind to actively listen to ‘unstruck melody’ and to let it merge with its sound, freedom, peace and control can be obtained. The first tool needed to hear this powerful sound is Simran, the focused practice which eliminates thoughts.
This exhibition aims to create moments of self-discovery that provoke the curiosity of the internal sound. The newly commissioned film featuring Nirbhai (Nep) Singh Sidhu and curator Deep K Kailey explores ideas around deep listening, community formation and the ongoing practice of compassion, humility and generosity in everyday life as found in Sikh teachings that transcend time.
BIOGRAPHY, NIRBHAI (NEP) SINGH SIDHU: is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist who works through labor-based knowledge production, Sikh interiority, and blood memory as an adaptive method for resilience and remembrance. For this exhibition, Sidhu will create a new body of drawings, sculptures, multimedia works, and paintings that reflects a Simran focused visual output to address realities of languaging and musicking as natural modes of ‘embodying a text’ (Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji) or ‘becoming the sound’ (Unstruck Melody) in the pursuit of expanding the mind while losing one’s autobiographical self.
Sidhu’s practice draws from a personal lifetime and family lineage of working in metal manufacturing plants in Toronto and the building of community-based sites for youth development such as Sher-E-Punjab Sports Academy in Chakar, Punjab. Through sound and silence, precedent works by the artist reveal an expansion of both the social external and cellular internal including omni-directional sound systems such as A Disappearance Potential (2021) and the interactive counter surveillance drum machine engaged by the public as a dual pinball arcade entitled The PIGG500 Security and Leisure Enhancement Console (2017). His varying material approaches to artmaking put forth a nondual guiding principle of detachment, leading to hyper presence, as seen in They Awakened in Algorithm (2021), an embroidered painting which bring together text, glyphs, architecture, and patterning. The ambition of his work is “to center realities of oneness that we don’t encounter physically, by pointing to the ecstatic and sensual in revealing a greater presence, with entities, ideas and one another.” Sidhu’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Aichi Triennale, Nagoya City Museum, Japan; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Esker Foundation, Calgary; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. He is a member of the Black Constellation collective and designs clothing and adornment under the Paradise Sportif moniker.
Opening Hours:
Sun–Tue: Closed
Wed-Sat: 12–16pm
FREE and OPEN TO ALL
Address:
without SHAPE without FORM HQ
221 Bath Road,
SLough,
SL1 4AA
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