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.
NEXT EXHIBITION 2026
The Story So Far – Helen Britton
Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft
An Australian Design Centre, ADC On Tour National Touring Exhibition
7 February – 24 April 2026
Helen Britton is a multidisciplinary Australian artist based in Munich, Germany. Her practice includes jewellery, sculpture, drawings, stencils and installations, and is informed by popular culture and folk art, threatened traditions, environmental destruction and human anxiety.
Her work is featured in 2026 at Watt Space Gallery in The Story So Far, a touring exhibition from The Australian Design Centre and part of the Living Treasures series.
The solo exhibition series honours eminent Australian craftspeople through celebrating their mastery of skill, their achievements and the unique place they occupy in the national design culture. Helen is the 10th Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft, and will be the 5th woman honoured in this series.
The Story So Far
Between 2017 and 2019 Helen traveled three times to Australia to document the house of her great Aunt and Godmother Kath Carr on the Clarence river (Ngunitiji, Yagel Country). Kath taught Helen how to make collages with pressed Australian flowers that she had collected, or with metal fillings from the lathe in the shed, to paint on porcelain which was her greatest hobby, and to make jewellery. Her house was full of wonders, shells, gemstones, driftwood, dried seaweed and fish. When she died her house was locked and left completely intact. Helen's detailed photographic investigation was a journey back to the beginnings of her creative practice.
This project, titled The Story So Far, takes as its starting point this photographic essay creating a network of connections between that time and this. The work will also comment on the rich and complex world of country women, of a time of creative frugality that formed Helen's early experience of Australia, of lost possibility, and of a colonial past and present, still so deeply problematic. New work, painting, installation, jewellery, drawings and objects will feature in the exhibition alongside photographs of Kath's house.
A major monograph with the publishing house Arnoldsche and the awarded German Book designer Alexandra Rutischka accompanies the exhibition, and a screening of a feature documentary made about Helen and her practice will also take place alongside the exhibition.
Watt Space Gallery is part of a multi-state national tour of Helen’s exhibition supported by a grant from the Federal Government’s Visions of Australia program that has supported the research and development for Australian Design Centre to work with Helen to present the exhibition.
IMAGE:
Helen Britton Junkyard 3, 2025, silver, paint, velvet, wood, copper, and steel
Helen Britton is represented in Australia by Gallery Funaki.
PREVIOUS EXHIBITION
Unseen Unspoken
Newcastle Art School Graduation Exhibition 2025
26 November – 13 December 2025
Special guest speaker Gerry Bobsien, Director, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, launched the 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.
You can download a copy of the TAFE 2025 Graduate Exhibition Catalogue HERE.
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)
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