The newly reimagined Newcastle Art Gallery (NAG) has unveiled three major exhibitions signalling a bold new chapter for the institution, and combining large-scale commissions with deeply personal explorations of culture and memory.

The exhibitions include the largest solo exhibition ever staged by acclaimed Torres Strait Islander artist Brian Robinson, the first institutional solo presentation by artist Tiyan Baker and The Mordant Family Gift, a major collection of works donated by leading philanthropists Simon Mordant AO and Catriona Mordant AM.

The launch marks another milestone for NAG following its reopening in February after a transformative expansion project that has positioned the venue as the largest public art institution in New South Wales outside Sydney.

Worlds collide inside Brian Robinson’s expansive vision

At the centre of the new program sits Multiverse, a sweeping survey exhibition tracing more than a decade of Brian Robinson’s practice. Featuring over 30 new and rarely exhibited works, the exhibition explores the artist’s distinctive visual language, one that fuses ancestral iconography with mythology, astronomy, science fiction and contemporary culture.

Robinson, who grew up on Waiben, also known as Thursday Island, and has Maluyligal and Wuthathi cultural heritage, says the exhibition reflects the many dimensions that shape his creative practice.

“Multiverse is a deeply personal exhibition for me, one that reflects the many pathways my practice has travelled over the past decade,” Robinson says.

“The title Multiverse suggests the existence of many worlds moving simultaneously, ancestral, spiritual, historical and imagined, where the everyday sits alongside mythology, science fiction, astronomy and cultural memory.”

Among the exhibition highlights is the New South Wales premiere of Robinson’s first immersive installation, Zugubal: The winds and the tides set the pace, alongside a new series of large-scale vinyl cut prints commissioned by NAG.

A gallery transformed for a new cultural era

The exhibition forms part of an increasingly ambitious curatorial direction made possible through the Gallery’s expansion, which has added 1600 square metres of exhibition space alongside new educational facilities, retail spaces and international standard loading infrastructure.

NAG director Lauretta Morton OAM says the response to the expanded institution has exceeded expectations, with visitor numbers already surpassing previous annual records.

“The response to the Gallery has been nothing short of remarkable, with more than 80,000 visitors already surpassing our previous annual visitation record,” Morton says.

“The expansion of the Gallery opens up opportunities to explore exhibitions of a size, scale and number that we were previously unable to present due to the limitations of our original building.”

Alongside Robinson’s exhibition, artist Tiyan Baker presents Mouth Mnemonica, a deeply personal body of work centred on the endangered Bukar language spoken by her mother and other Bukar Bidayǔh people of south-west Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo.

The exhibition combines moving image, sound and sculptural elements through a newly commissioned multi-channel video installation that examines language as a vessel for intergenerational memory and cultural knowledge.

Blending poetic verse with archival material and oral histories, Baker’s work navigates themes of remembrance, inheritance and identity.

“This new body of work combines my poetic verse and my mum’s with found records of our oral poetry culture before colonisation, creating an intergenerational poem about forgetting, remembering and what we pass down over generations,” Baker says.

“Through this I hope to give new life to our endangered language and the knowledge it holds.”

Also opening is The Mordant Family Gift, which gathers 25 works by Australian and international artists spanning painting, sculpture, photography, textiles and installation. The exhibition marks the first time the gifted works have been presented collectively to the public and represents the largest donation the Mordant family has made to a single institution.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Ian Abdulla, Janet Laurence, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Jamie North, Tim Silver and Gemma Smith, among others.

The exhibitions form part of an expansive 2026 program for NAG, which will also feature the first major Australian survey of Newcastle-based artist Angela Tiatia and a world-first solo exhibition by painter and media personality Anh Do.

Owned and operated by City of Newcastle, the Gallery houses a collection of more than 7000 works valued at approximately $145 million, cementing its position as one of regional Australia’s most significant cultural institutions.

Top image: Newcastle Art Gallery interior. Image: Supplied.