Ali Cook and Alia Gargum

Their work is currently on show as part of the exhibition at the South London Gallery (SLG) until April and will head North to the Middlesbrough Institute for Modern Art (MIMA) in May.

Ali Cook graduated with a degree in Fine Art in 2024. He is a painter whose brutally truthful surrealist pieces show people something that resonates emotionally, visually expressing how we all feel collectively.

His exhibitions include Being with Kate Sweeney, Vane Gallery, Gateshead, 2025, and New Graduate Award, Middlesbrough Art Week, Middlesbrough, 2024.

Alia Gargum graduated with a Master of Fine Art degree in 2024. She is a sculpture and installation artist who composes her work through critical and personal exploration of politics and culture, focusing on her heritage through diasporic means.
Her recent exhibitions include: ḵawwāfa / خَوَّافَة at 36 Lime Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, 2025 and as part of Middlesbrough Art Week, Middlesbrough, 2024. Alia was awarded the Hatton Prize for outstanding ambition in the installation of the Newcastle University MFA Graduate show, and the Bartlett Award for Sustainability by Newcastle University’s Fine Art department.

Evolving desires

Works in the exhibition will span painting, sculpture, installation, photography and moving image, illustrating the full breadth of artistic practice across the UK. Presented thematically in both the SLG and MIMA exhibitions, they will engage with speculations on dystopian futures; critical responses to the climate crisis, industrialisation, gentrification and displacement; and critical approaches to systems of power. The exhibition will also examine our inherent entanglement with digital technologies and our evolving desire to understand realities beyond human perception through other species.

Additionally, themes of mourning, remembrance and loss are explored through a range of collective and personal experiences. Some artists merge figuration with abstraction to investigate intersecting identities, cultural heritage and a desire for connection, while others draw on the familiar and the fantastical - from both urban environments to intimate domestic interiors- as constructions of selfhood and place.

As part of its new direction, New Contemporaries expanded its UK wide reach ensuring that at least half of participating artists are based outside London and that its programmes represent the full breadth of today’s contemporary art practice. Through partnerships with organisations such as the South London Gallery, MIMA Middlesbrough, Forma, and Hospitalfield, New Contemporaries’ new programme will now include annual residencies, studio bursaries and an artist development programme that offer participants space, time, and sustained support. 

“I am really excited by our selection for New Contemporaries,” said artist selector Grace Ndiritu. “We have chosen a diverse range of artists from all over the UK, with a variety of mediums and points of view, that are both visually arresting and can help bring a little bit of joy and beauty into an increasingly difficult world.”

Laura Sillars, Director of MIMA, said “At MIMA, we are passionate about nurturing early career and emerging artists. We give them space and encouragement to take the risks they need to take. We are proud to be part of New Contemporaries, championing new artists and building the creativity that will shape the future of contemporary practice.”

The exhibition dates are:

• South London Gallery:  until 12 April 2026
• MIMA, Middlesbrough: 8 May – 16 August 2026

Press release adapted with thanks to New Contemporaries