Hoodies Sculpture to Be Unveiled in Pitzhanger Manor Gardens

Work by local artist Prem Sahib part of his Doubles exhibition

The artist's visualisation of how the sculpture ill appear

June 23, 2025

A new sculpture by a local artist is to be unveiled in the front gardens of Pitzhanger Manor.

Bronze Apotropaic (2025) is a 1.5 metre high piece showing two hooded sweatshirts, one appearing to float above the other in an ambiguous embrace.

It is the work of Prem Sahib, an artist who has close associations with nearby Walpole Park, and Southall, where he was raised. The new sculpture, in a continuation of Sahib’s work with garments, was conceived of as a pair of ‘trickster’ figures — folkloric entities who possess clandestine knowledge, used to deceive and disobey conventional systems of order — the forms appear like an apparition, absent bodies delineated only by clothing. Apotropaic means to avert evil influences or bad luck.

Following the exhibition at Pitzhanger the sculpture will move to a permanent home in the London Borough of Ealing.

Prem Sahib said, “I’ve used clothing in my work for many years now, often manipulating and contorting it in ways that suggest the pressures and experience of life in the city, or of encounters between bodies. This new bronze sculpture flirts with more traditional ways of representing the figure in public space, using clothes to suggest a disembodied, scarecrow-like presence. It is meaningful to me that my first permanent public commission will have a home in the Borough of Ealing.”

Bronze Apotropaic is the starting point for Doubles, Sahib’s series of installations and sculptural interventions which will be on display in the gallery at Pitzhanger Manor from 26 June to 21 September. Access is with general admission to the house.

The works in Doubles include Apotropaic 1 (2023) an earlier fabric iteration of the new sculpture, and Liquid Gold (2016-ongoing), a lurid yellow beacon on Pitzhanger’s roof lantern, which will illuminate every evening after dark. Others include Front (2017), an architectural replica of a window from a public toilet that once stood in the park, now transposed to an interior room of the manor, and Archive (2019), a display of letters, newspaper clippings and other ephemera from Sahib’s uncle who was a race equality campaigner in the 1980s Southall.

Prem Sahib. Picture: Xavi Llarch Font

Richard Parry, Head of Public Programmes at Pitzhanger said, “We are thrilled to unveil ‘Bronze Apotropaic’ at Pitzhanger. Not only does the sculpture mark a key development in the artist’s oeuvre as a substantial work of outdoor public art, but it also draws on personal affiliations with the park and neighbourhood around Pitzhanger, close to where the artist grew up, and which have formed a prominent thread in their artwork over many years.”

At the Edinburgh Art Festival last year, the artist presented a new performance in Edinburgh’s Castle Terrace Car Park. Sahib has shown work internationally, including at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Migros Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Hayward Gallery, KW Institute of Art, Des Moines Art Centre, MONA Australia, Walker Art Centre, and the Gwangju Biennale, among others.

Tickets and further information will be available on pitzhanger.org.uk/prem-sahib.

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery is at Ealing Green, (W5 5EQ).