Contemporary and dynamic, Watt Space operates in the University’s Newcastle City precinct in an award winning re-purposed civic building, Northumberland House. Its heritage facade opens to industrial style galleries within, designed by UON alumnus Andrew Donaldson.

Watt Space, the longest running student gallery in Australia, is celebrating 31 years as an inspirational cultural hub for our students and community. In 2020 the gallery welcomes an extended student internship program to support its exciting and diverse calendar of exhibitions. If you are interested in volunteering at Watt Space, you can find more information here.

MARCH EXHIBITIONS

[CENSURATIVA] - Crystian Cruz
EPHEMERAL COMPOSITIONS - Kathryn Jeanes
COMMUNE WITH NATURE - Mary Graham
UNKNOWN LANDS - Susan Zglinicki

6 - 29 MARCH

OPENING FRIDAY 6 MARCH FROM 5:30PM

[CENSURATIVA] - Crystian Cruz

What are the consequences of censorship on activities that involve creative work? Songs, soap operas, newspapers, books and magazines are among the censored artefacts examined in Cruz’s practice-based PhD research. This exhibition presents a visual journey through creative attempts to circumvent censorship during the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985). Put your creativity to the test through an interactive typographic experiment that emulates the experience of encountering censorial activities and censored material.

^{Crystian Cruz, [Censurativa] 2020, digital collage.}

EPHEMERAL COMPOSITIONS - Kathryn Jeanes

^{Kathryn Jeanes, Ephemeral Compositions 2017, photographic print, 45 x 45 cm}

COMMUNE WITH NATURE - Mary Graham

Commune with Nature explores the respect for nature granted by the appreciation of flora through artistic practice, particularly the process of natural dyeing.

Focussing on the colours and textures of the bark and fallen leaves of gum trees, Graham’s work contributes to a contemporary revival of natural dyeing methods and presents an ode to the inherent beauty of nature.

^{Mary Graham, Mad About You 2020 botanical print on cotton dyed with Madder, 147 x 99 cm}

UNKNOWN LANDS - Susan Zglinicki

The quality of light, the beauty of the natural world and the use of landscape tap into our primal connection to the earth. This is demonstrated by our ability to be submerged in its isolation and loneliness, with the seemingly contradictory belief that we are in control over it and that its beauty is therefore for our pleasure alone. In our relationship to landscape there is an ebb and flow between knowledge and uncertainty, between complacence and fear. These works echo the transient nature of the landscape and act as a tribute to the transient lives of the women who have, throughout history, painted it.

^{Susan Zglinicki, Unknown Lands 2 2016, ink on canvas, 27 x 29 cm}

COMING SOON

TRUTH: THEN / NOW / EVERYWHEN 
1 APRIL - 3 MAY

OPENING FRIDAY 3 APRIL FROM 5:30PM

TRUTH: THEN / NOW / EVERYWHEN emerged from a theoretical exhibition presented in the context of a submission to the editor at a prominent Australian art magazine, exploring ideas around truth-telling, brutality and the story of Australia’s past. On the 250th anniversary of Cook’s voyage to Australia in 1770, the exhibition presents artworks by contemporary Aboriginal artists whose works challenge both the way we approach and tell our history and the very notion of art itself.