Art Gene presents solo exhibition from Catalyst residency winner Azraa Motala

Art Gene is delighted to present Motherland, a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Azraa Motala, opening on 19 November at the Art Gene gallery in Barrow-in-Furness. Bringing together work created over the last 10 years and recently as recipient of the 2024 Catalyst creative residency, the exhibition offers a unique chance to explore the work of this talented new voice in contemporary art.

Motala’s practice is multidisciplinary, radiating out from painting into photography, poetry and text. Her work explores those landscapes which are coded as traditionally British, including the rural North, industrial towns, the countryside and textile mills, and looks at how these places hold hidden histories.

Recent works have focused on rural England and, specifically, Cumbria, especially the South Lakes where Motala found herself living during the Covid lockdowns. The body of work on show in Motherland draws on Motala’s own experiences of living in a rural area, and her connections with communities in South Cumbria. It draws on conversations with women from all over the North West, alongside cultural food memories and the influence of a recent visit to India. 

Motala’s work explores how the human stories of power, class, labour and migration intersect with the way that traditional landscape painting and literature has created a particular picturesque and pastoral image of the area in the popular imagination. Bringing a sense of geography and landscape together with deeply human stories of family, motherhood, migration, South Asian culture and the North, the work explores and celebrates complexity, asking who gets to be seen, and on whose terms?

As part of her Catalyst creative residency, Motala has created a bold new painting, engaging unflinchingly with extreme right-wing responses to an Islamic Centre being built in Dalton-in-Furness, a village close to Barrow. 

 

“Azraa is a special talent, and as a judge on the Catalyst selection panel I was excited to be able to award her one of three £25,000 residency grants to pursue her work. Azraa’s residency, hosted by Art Gene, coincided with the build of a welcome new mosque, funded by and serving the community who are vital to maintaining our local NHS and other services. It has been shocking to witness the arrival of outside, far-right agitators in our otherwise inclusive and welcoming town and heartening to see them outnumbered on our streets month after month. In this context, I’m fiercely proud to show Azraa’s new work. She deftly demonstrates the relevance of contemporary art in the modern world: in Motherland a single picture speaks out more powerfully than a thousand newspaper headlines and social media posts. Don’t miss it.”

– Maddi Nicholson, Artist and Director, Art Gene

 

Exhibition details

Motherland, Azraa Motala

Press viewing day Wednesday 18 November 2026

Opening reception Thursday 19 November 2026, 6.30pm

Exhibition continues to Saturday 30 January 2027

 

Art Gene Gallery, Bath Street, Barrow-in-Furness,

Cumbria, LA14 5TY England, UK

*Note, the exhibition will be closed on Sundays and Mondays, and on Sat 5 December, and between 19 December to 4 January inclusive. 

 

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