Newcastle’s Independent Art Guide

The Novocastrian is Newcastle’s independent art guide, presenting current exhibitions, openings and creative events across the city. Updated daily, it highlights work from local galleries, artist-run spaces and studios, making it easy to see what’s on and plan your next visit. Explore exhibitions, discover new artists and stay connected to Newcastle’s evolving arts scene.

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FEATURED ARTIST

Each month, The Novocastrian features a Newcastle-based artist through a short, conversational video interview. These conversations focus on how artists think, observe, and work, offering insight into the ideas and processes that shape their practice. It’s a way of understanding the thinking behind the work – and the values that sit at the core of this website.

Featured artist

Graham Wilson

Graham Wilson has been making art for most of his life. He studied printmaking in Newcastle, worked across woodcut, screen printing, etching and lithography, trained as a stonemason, carved stone at a cathedral in Norway, and has spent decades making work that connects landscape, memory and environmental concerns.
For Graham, being an artist is less about deciding to become one than continuing something that begins naturally.

Watch the full interview here →

NOW SHOWING IN NEWCASTLE

Bringing together all of the current exhibitions from galleries and artist-run spaces across Newcastle. Updated regularly, it offers a clear view of what’s on right now, making it easier to discover work as it’s happening across the city.

LEDA Gallery

Completely Normal and Other Lies

Kimberly Swan’s observations of everyday objects, interiors and familiar scenes take on new meaning in Completely Normal and Other Lies. Created over twelve months, the works began without a set theme, gradually becoming a personal record of her experience of perimenopause. Through oil paintings, installation…

October 10, 2026 – October 21, 2026

Pseudonym Gallery

Re

Pseudonym Gallery warmly invites you to 'Re'a solo exhibition by Newcastle based artist Joshua Bollback Butler. Joshua is a storyteller, creating rich tapestries of flora and fauna, woven together to give viewers a window into his soul. Come and join us for drinks on Saturday…

October 3, 2026 – October 17, 2026

Back to Back Galleries

Life and Line

Life and Line brings together the work of Lynnette Passeri and Elizabeth Mead in a conversation between ceramics and painting. Across clay and canvas, line becomes contour, gesture and rhythm, revealing the movement of the hand and the process of making. The exhibition explores the…

October 2, 2026 – October 18, 2026

Newcastle Art Gallery

Muse

Muse is first major survey of globally recognised and Newcastle-based artist Angela Tiatia. Drawing together twenty years of video, photography and installation, this exhibition invites audiences to be immersed in the largest ever presentation of Tiatia’s visually luscious and politically incisive art practice. This timely…

September 26, 2026 – February 21, 2027

Straitjacket

Myth

In MYTH, Hunter Valley artist Bianca Vern-Barnett explores the point where the inner, imagined world meets collective memory, storytelling and shared experience. Her practice begins with stories that capture her attention, considering why certain narratives endure and what they might reveal about personal experience. Approaching…

September 26, 2026 – October 18, 2026

Straitjacket

The Surrounds Around

Sydney artist Liz Payne presents her first exhibition in Newcastle with The Surrounds Around, a multidisciplinary body of work spanning painting, textiles and design. Payne works across art, craft and design, using bold colour, pattern, texture and form to explore abstraction. In this exhibition, botanical,…

September 26, 2026 – October 18, 2026

Straitjacket

Soft Edge

Soft Edge brings together embroidery, textiles, painting and assemblage in a body of work exploring repetition, mirrored imagery and imagined narratives. Helena Newcombe combines embroidery with acrylic paint, using stitching to add texture and detail to painted surfaces. Animals appear throughout the exhibition as symbolic,…

September 26, 2026 – October 18, 2026

The Lock-Up

Izabela Pluta / Cavitation

A monumental solo project by internationally recognised, Newcastle-based contemporary artist Izabela Pluta as part of a major international co-commission with TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Poland, and presented with key partner New Annual Festival. Cavitation unfolds across water, sound and fractured cartographies, examining how systems…

September 25, 2026 – January 31, 2027

The Owens Collective (The Show Room)

TRIO

An exhibition by practising artists Yvette Ten-Bohmer, Andy Devine and Grant Vercoe The exhibition's title creates a space where each artist exists independently while remaining connected within a greater whole. Like individual voices in conversation, their distinct practices come together to reveal a shared sense…

September 25, 2026 – October 11, 2026

Newcastle Art Space

Welcome to the Suburbs

'Welcome to the Suburbs' is a group show featuring works by artists across a range of media inspired by their suburb. We have a special guest artist who is well known for her images of suburban dwellings Catherine O'Donnell and currently represented by Dominik Mersch…

September 24, 2026 – October 18, 2026

Timeless Textiles Gallery

Suburban Alchemy

Suburban Alchemy Nicole de Mestre explores the transformative potential of discarded materials and the overlooked resources embedded within everyday urban life. Found objects, industrial remnants and household waste-all destined for landfill-are collected from the suburban landscape and reimagined. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. Discarded rope, wire,…

September 23, 2026 – November 1, 2026

Watt Space Gallery (UON)

Night Flowers: Damien Frost

Night Flowers is, at its core, an exhibition about the relationship between photography and self-presentation: the collaborative, sometimes theatrical process through which photographer and subject arrive together at an image. Presented for New Annual, Night Flowers brings together portraits made over a decade in London’s…

September 23, 2026 – November 7, 2026

Lighthouse Arts

Australian Gothic

Our exhibition explores the evolving genre of Australian Gothic through the lens of artists living and working on Awabakal and Worimi Country. Australian Gothic offers a powerful way to express the darker, more complex realities of living in Australia- stories that have been shaped by…

September 12, 2026 – November 1, 2026

The University Gallery (UON)

Synergy

The University Galleries at Callaghan are pleased to partner with Newcastle Art Space to present their 2026 Mentorship Exhibition SYNERGY. Curated by Melody Suranyi (mentee) and Jo O'Toole (mentor) the theme and title of this year’s Newcastle Art Space Mentorship Exhibition - Synergy - is…

September 4, 2026 – November 14, 2026

COMING SOON

Bringing together exhibitions that are about to open across Newcastle and nearby galleries. It’s a way to look ahead, make plans, and follow what’s next as new work prepares to go on view.

cstudios art gallery

Tender

Tender brings together established artists Jackie Gorring and Jill Orr in a collaborative exhibition of printmaking, sculpture and watercolour. Based in Victoria, Gorring works across handmade relief prints, sculpture and ceramics, with a practice characterised by humour, experimentation and a sense of creative play. Orr…

October 16, 2026 – October 31, 2026

Wester Gallery

The Novocastrian – Year One

Join us to celebrate a year of The Novocastrian and the artists who make Newcastle and the Hunter such a vibrant place to experience visual art. The Novocastrian: Year One brings together a group of artists who have all been featured by The Novocastrian over…

November 6, 2026 – November 21, 2026

DAY TRIPS FROM NEWCASTLE

Day Trips from Newcastle brings together exhibitions just outside the city, ideal for a short drive and a slower look. From Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery through to Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Singleton Art + Cultural Centre, and Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, these listings encourage audiences to explore the wider region through art.

Museum of Art and Culture, yapang

Adam Manning: Embodied Rhythm

Embodied Rhythm explores rhythm as something lived, felt and shared across sound, painting and moving image. Rather than treating rhythm as something fixed or measured, the exhibition considers how pulse and pattern are shaped by memory, place, culture and relationships. At the centre of the…

September 26, 2026 – November 29, 2026

Hunter Wetlands Centre Artspace

Wetlands Impressions

Local artists Merran Kilgour and Eugenia Dunlevie have joined forces for "Wetlands Impressions" on show at the Hunter Wetlands Centre Artspace from 26 September 2026. Merran and Eugenia share a passion for capturing images of the landscape in all its guises. The multi award-winning artists…

September 26, 2026 – October 22, 2026

Singleton Arts and Cultural Centre

The Quiet Room

Jono Everett - The Quiet Room Singleton Arts + Cultural Centre Newcastle artist Jono Everett presents his first museum solo exhibition, and his largest exhibition to date, at Singleton Arts + Cultural Centre. The Quiet Room explores home, memory and the emotional weight carried by…

August 22, 2026 – November 15, 2026

Singleton Arts and Cultural Centre

I Have More To Say

I Have More To Say explores the quiet turning points of everyday life: decisions made, conversations avoided and moments understood but left unsaid. Through carefully staged photographic scenes, Jasmine Poole and Christopher Sewell use collected objects to give physical form to memory, uncertainty and change.…

August 21, 2026 – November 15, 2026

Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre

Water

Spanning fifty years of practice, Water brings together paintings and drawings by Peter Gill from 1976 to the present, tracing an enduring fascination with rivers, creeks, gardens and coastlines. From the waterways surrounding his Muswellbrook home to landscapes encountered through travel, Gill is drawn to…

August 13, 2026 – December 23, 2026

Maitland Regional Art Gallery

Upriver Downriver

Building on the 2023 iteration of Upriver Downriver, Maitland Regional Art Gallery will embark on a major exhibition energising all our Gallery spaces to celebrate the expansive range of art and ideas resonating throughout our region.

July 11, 2026 – October 11, 2026

Thank you to our community partners for their support.

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