CURRENT EXHIBITION

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}