Alia Gargum was selected for the AUX x MO artists support programme which commenced in May 2024. As a result Alia will be exhibiting work at the Middlesbrough Art Week September 27th-October 5th 2024, benefitting from mentoring and receiving a £1200 bursary to support their practice.

Alia is a British-Libyan artist based in Newcastle who composes her work through critical and personal exploration of politics and culture, focusing on her heritage through diasporic means. Sculpture, paintings and installation elements are reorganised and transformed in an organic manner as part of the artistic process.  Alia primarily uses hand-treated steel and  hand-manipulated paper to depict signifiers of her past through a contemporary lens.

 Alia’s work explores power dynamics that echo into personal relationships, with a focus on the history of Middle Eastern and North African region power structures. Themes of forced migration, exile and identity also converge her works.

Find out more about Alia’s work here and about her Artists Connecting in Transition (ACT) on line exhibition here.

When I met with Alia on 16th July she was approaching the mid-point of the six month support period as well as the end of her MFA at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. New work was evolving in the studio in preparation for a major installation in the Hatton Gallery in August. Alia spoke about her working methods and how these connected with themes around forced migration and displacement, and how her practice evolves as an ongoing dialogue with itself, a continuation of a story where physical elements are often reused repeatedly. By utilising reclaimed, repurposed and recycled items, Alia reclaims, recycles and repurposes contexts within the work.

Alia’s interest in the relationship of architectural forms as ‘power structures’, and how forms are echoed across cultures, was contrasted with the soft flow of fabrics which are inspired by the traditional Libyan Farrashia. We talked about connectivity across displaced communities and the potential for ways the work for the Middlesbrough Art Week (MAW) may develop in the second half of the support period.

In addition to developing outcomes Alia has been meeting MAW curators and working with mentor Lenka Clayton on developing practical strategies for continuing her practice beyond the MFA and AUX x MO support period. Of the mentoring programme Alia states:

"…can I say how incredible Lenka is and how instrumental our meetings have been! A truly fantastic human and guide that I have found so much joy in talking to, thank you…Absolutely life changing support." 

I’m really looking forward to seeing how Alia’s work evolves for the MAW.

On September 26th 2024, Alia’s solo show opened at the Middlesbrough Art Week and was met with a fantastic response and over 600 visitors. Alia appeared on the BBC and featured heavily in a number of fantastic reviews of the MAW.

You can find out more about Alia’s show here and read the review by Tom Jeffreys, a writer based in Edinburgh, which was published in Art Monthly 481: November 2024.