The Newly Renovated Newcastle Art Gallery Reopens With Hundreds of Rarely Seen Works

Visiting Newcastle soon? The coastal city’s art gallery has undergone a major facelift, adding a shiny new 1,600 square metres of exhibition space to its original 1977 brutalist buildings.

Award-winning architects from Clare Design are behind the revamp, which also adds a new cafe, retail shop, multi-purpose program space, learning studio and secure loading dock for the works of art.

The expansion means even more wall space to show off the Newcastle Art Gallery’s impressive $145 million collection, which includes pieces by national icons such as Albert Namatjira, Margaret Olley and Patricia Piccinini.

To celebrate the gallery’s revamp, it’s taking over Laman Street on February 27 for a free street party. It’ll come alive with a temporary sculpture park by local artists Braddon Snape and Dani Marti that’s open to all ages, with large-scale installations and live dance, poetry and performance art by artists from the gallery’s collection. Music acts Kinder (fresh off their national tour), The Pitts, Bonnie Anne, Rose White and Jayteehazard will be taking to the outdoor stage, while elsewhere you’ll find food trucks, a pop-up bar, hands-on family activities and more. You’ll also get to explore the major reopening exhibition, with special activations spread out across the building, with performances by CREATION, Toby Cedar, Tina Havelock Stevens and more.

The gallery properly reopens on February 28 with exhibition Iconic Loved Unexpected, featuring Piccinini’s slightly terrifying Nature’s Little Helpers – Surrogate (For the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat), Nell’s disarming sculpture The Ghost on the Road Will Never Die, and Brett Whiteley’s almost sunburnt Wynne Prize-winner Summer at Carcoar, his entry from 1978, when he also won the Archibald and Sulman prizes.

Visitors will get to see more than close to 500 works of art – just a fraction of the gallery’s 7000-strong collection – including 19th-century paintings such as Joseph Lycett’s Inner View of Newcastle, through to contemporary sculptures like Japanese artist Kazuo Yagi’s tactile, tubular Design Plan (Face).

New works of art have also been commissioned especially for the opening, including two new sculptures by artist Fayen d’Evie, alongside previously displayed work by Wiradjuri and Wongaibon artist Renae Lamb, and a suspended piece by Quandamooka artist Megan Cope featuring 44 poles adorned with rock oyster shells.

Visitors will also get to see the four-metre-high sculpture by Awabakal artist Shellie Smith and Newcastle sculptor Julie Squires. In prime place at the entrance will be 30 aluminium fish in a spiralling school formation. It’s a work inspired by Smith’s memories of fishing with her grandmother in Port Stephens.

Iconic Loved Unexpected is free to explore, taking over the entire gallery with vibrant programming across the whole reopening weekend. Following this, the Gallery opens seven days a week, and kicks off Friday Night Sounds – a weekly late-night series featuring DJs and performers – from 5–8pm.

Iconic Loved Unexpected opens on February 28. Entry is free.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Newcastle Art Gallery.