Newcastle Art Gallery opens two Australian-premiere exhibitions: ‘Angela Tiatia: Muse’ and ‘New Spring’

Newcastle Art Gallery in New South Wales, Australia — reopened in February this year after its expansion — opens today, September 26, two Australian-premiere exhibitions marking a new step in the expanded gallery’s vision. The openings run alongside the New Annual festival (September 25 – October 4, 2026), ten days of art, music, theater and performance across the city.

The first exhibition, “Angela Tiatia: Muse,” is the first major career retrospective of the two-decade career of Samoan-Australian artist Angela Tiatia. Through videos, photographs and installations, the exhibition follows the artist’s practice exploring themes of identity, culture and history. The exhibition is ticketed and runs from September 26, 2026 to February 7, 2027.

Coming to Australia for the first time is also the duo A.A. Murakami with “New Spring,” a multisensory installation in which mist-filled light bubbles “bloom” and fall like flowers from three tree-shaped sculptures. The work is part of the “ephemeral technology” series, in which the artists build their own machines that recreate natural phenomena. Entry is free and the exhibition runs from September 26, 2026 to January 31, 2027.

The program is complemented by the first presentation outside the National Portrait Gallery of the video “The Matildas, 2025” — a 23-minute video portrait of all 23 players of the CommBank Matildas team at the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, including Emily van Egmond and Clare Wheeler from Newcastle. The work, shot across three continents, five cities and seven sessions, has free entry and runs from September 26, 2026 to February 7, 2027. Meanwhile, the window of the Learning Studio on Darby Street displays the second window commission — a large graphic with a grid of faces by artist Indeah Clark, which runs until September 26, 2027.

Gallery director Lauretta Morton OAM and gallery foundation chair Suzie Galwey have described the new program as evidence of the expanded gallery’s ambition to bring contemporary art of international weight to Newcastle, as 16 News reports.