Watt Space Gallery
Located in the heart of Newcastle, Watt Space Gallery was founded in 1989 by dedicated student advocates as a place of creative experimentation. Now, as then, we continue to challenge, inspire, and inform through our innovative and creative exhibitions and programs.
Building on the community and student-led ethos of our foundation, we proudly feature emerging and established cross-disciplinary artists and curators, including those from within our University.
LATEST EXHIBITION
Unseen Unspoken
Newcastle Art School Graduation Exhibition 2025
26 November – 13 December 2025
Please join the artists and special guest speaker Gerry Bobsien, Director, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, for the launch event at Watt Space Gallery on Thursday 27 November from 6pm.
The 2025 Newcastle Art School Graduation Exhibition celebrates and acknowledges the work of three artists completing the Creative Practice degree program at TAFE NSW – Eliza Blackwell, Chloe Hooper, and Leanne Swainson.
The exhibition marks a creative milestone for the graduates as they embark on the next phase of their artistic journeys. The title of the exhibition, Unseen Unspoken explores themes of hidden or silenced experiences, whether that be physical or transcendent.
Each artist delves into these personal themes through unique styles, creating works that reflect their distinct practices. Together, these diverse yet interwoven practices create an exhibition that invites reflection through explorations of the dream and the dreamer, invisible maladies, and women’s health.
Unseen Unspoken reminds us that profound individual experiences should evoke change and discourse.
IMAGES:
Leanne Swainson Stories of Her 2025 (detail), Copper, wool, cotton, rug wool, silk, and hand-dyed merino wool. 220 cm diameter
Chloe Hooper A Beautiful Lie 2025, Acrylic on board, 20 cm diameter
Eliza Blackwell The Host: Constriction 2025 (detail), Graphite on watercolour paper 42 cm x 29.7 cm (sheet size)
PREVIOUS EXHIBITION
BIO ASSEMBLY
@ NEW ANNUAL
17 September – 15 November 2025
BIO ASSEMBLY is a suite of four exhibitions, featuring seven artists that challenge our perceptions of landscape, space, ethics and entropy. Intimate and immersive, the artists present alternate views and recreate spaces that mediate anticipated responses to four distinct environments, from the tattoo parlour to epic wilderness.
Ampulla of Lorenzini Sandy Sanderson (Composer Tim Merrikin)
Time Traces Martin K. Koszolko and Max Schleser
Nestled Louisa Magrics
Grey Lines Marie Hadley and Adam McDade
A number of public programs, events and workshops will be featured during the festival period:
Saturday 27 September 4–6pm: Exhibition Launch: Bio Assembly
This is Watt Space’s official exhibition launch event - bring your family and friends!
Sunday 28 September 11.30–1pm: Harvesters – employing the elemental in practice
Join us for brunch and a fascinating discussion at Watt Space with New Annual artists who employ structural and sonic material harvested from the environment as a primary medium in their work. We will hear from Martin K. Koszolko and Max Schleser (Time Traces) who through their audio/visual works invite us on an eco-critical journey backgrounded by the rhythms of nature. Diana Chester and Damien Ricketson (Listen to a Starfish at Camp Shortland) use equipment to capture the conversation and geophony of the land, sea and air. Sandy Sanderson with Tim Merrikan (Ampulla of Lorenzini) curates symbolic ritual, surreal visuals and a visceral composition and asks us to feel the world through its electricity. Louisa Magrics (Nestled) employs polyphonic sounds as the mathematical basis for creating woven structures that create sensory environments.
Saturday 4 October 11–12pm: Creative Copyright – a curated walking tour from Watt Space Gallery
Marie Hadley (Grey Lines) with Nikolas Orr and Sarah Hook, uncover the lesser-known stories behind the art we encounter in the streets of Newcastle —and the private rights that quietly shape how we might interact with them. Join them for a meander through Civic Park, Civic Square and Watt Space Gallery, where sculpture, street art, and a two-headed wolf tattoo become entry points into deeper conversations about ownership, appropriation, and creative freedom.
We will also be hosting the following ticketed New Annual events:
https://newannual.com/explore/events/bad-art-party
And in the Theatrette at University House (across the road):
https://newannual.com/explore/events/chicken
NEW ANNUAL
newannual.com
Extended OPENING HOURS @ Watt Space during the Festival 26 September – 05 October are MONDAY to SUNDAY 10am–6pm
IMAGE: Sandy Sanderson, Ampulla of Lorenzini 4 (detail) 2025, video with composition by Tim Merrikin
Latest exhibitions and events
Bio Assembly
BIO ASSEMBLY is a suite of four exhibitions, featuring seven artists that challenge our perceptions of landscape, space, ethics and entropy.
Read more
Sculpture in the Botanic Gardens and Watt Space Gallery
Please join the artists for two launches: at Watt Space Gallery Thursday 31 July from 5.30pm and at Hunter Region Botanic Gardens Saturday 2 August from 1pm
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Weaving Emergent Geographies
We are at a point in time where we must urgently address global challenges such as climate change, human rights, migrations, increasing inequalities, the rights of nature, the importance of Indigenous knowledge, and human-environment interactions.
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SIXTY YEARS The Art Collection
In this, the 60th year of the University of Newcastle, we are profiling four exhibitions drawn from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works in our own University Art Collection.
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I Tried To Make A Horizon For You - Lottie Consalvo
Consalvo’s practice holds deep reverence for the mind and its capacities both within and outside of reality. Pushing ideas beyond our imaginings into places unknown and ungraspable.
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Light Source - Kris Smith, Ken O'Regan, and Chris Brown
Multi-disciplinary artists Ken O’Regan, Chris Brown and Kris Smith, present Light Source, a meditation on the passage of deep time and the intersection of natural and built environments.
Read more
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Sign upThe University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.