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.

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as the Custodians of Country throughout Australia and we recognise their continuing connection to lands, waters and culture. The information here may contain images or names of people who have since passed.

Banner image: Ngaire Pakai, Maker/Artist once known and Corina Wayali Norman, Useful Objects, 2024.

Exterior of Watt Space Gallery lit up in red
Watt Space Gallery is housed in the award-winning repurposed Northumberland House, with beautiful interiors designed by alumnus Andrew Donaldson
CURRENT EXHIBITION

Video still of hands holding an ampulla

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

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION

Peter Tilley Hunter Region Botanic Gardens digital photograph

Sculpture in the Botanic Gardens and Watt Space Gallery

RESPONSE III

23 July – 13 September 2025

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

Tracie Bertram    Laura Bishop     Max Blanch    Andy Devine    Doug Heslop    Fiona Lee & Aaron Crowe    Kelly Ann Lees    Louisa Magrics    Vlasé Nikoleski    Jon Pryer    Ron Royes    Greg Salter    Kris Smith    Shellie Smith    Lezlie Tilley    Peter Tilley    John Turier    Trevor Weekes    Bridget Whitehead    Grahame Wilson    Patricia Wilson-Adams    Dean Winter

Twenty three artists explore, challenge and interrogate the dialogue that has long existed between architectural sculptural form and the natural environment for this exhibition at the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens. Choosing their own site within which to work among the 130 hectares nestled on the lower reaches of the Hunter River at Heatherbrae, site and its specifics are at the core of the developed work.

The primary inspiration from the external large-scale work extends the visual narrative from the sculptures nestled in the dense natural terrain to those in the mediated gallery environment. Each artist was invited to develop interventions into the vast external spaces and these have been wrought into domestic scale sculptures as maquettes or companion pieces to the in situ works for exhibition at Watt Space Gallery.

Download the Response III Sculpture in the Botanic Gardens and Watt Space Catalogue here

This exhibition is a partnership between the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens, and the University Galleries, Watt Space. https://www.huntergardens.org.au/

IMAGE: Peter Tilley, Hunter Region Botanic Gardens, digital photograph

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Image: Leo Robba, The Gully series, 2022 acrylic on timber board, 30cm x 30cm. Courtesy of the artist.