When Newcastle plays host to The Matildas this September, the performance won’t happen in front of a stadium packed with football fans – but on the walls of Newcastle Art Gallery.
The 23-minute video work will make its NSW gallery debut alongside a world-first exhibition, Muse, which surveys 20 years of art practice by globally recognised Newcastle-based artist Angela Tiatia.
Still from Angela Tiatia The Matildas 2025. National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Commissioned with funds provided by Tim Fairfax AC and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Newcastle Art Gallery Director Lauretta Morton OAM said the exhibition will immerse audiences in the largest presentation to date of Tiatia’s visually luscious and politically incisive work.
“Angela Tiatia is one of the most vital voices in contemporary Australian art, and we’re incredibly proud to present the first major survey of her career here in Newcastle, the city she now calls home,” Ms Morton said.
“We are thrilled to pair this survey with her extraordinary 2025 portrait, The Matildas, giving our audiences a rare chance to see the wide breadth of her incredible practice in one place.”
Featuring video, photography and installation, Angela Tiatia: Muse will bring together Tiatia’s most significant works from public and private collections across Australia, celebrating her poetic considerations of climate, capitalism, and colonisation.
The exhibition traces the arc of the Sāmoan/Australian artist’s multi-disciplinary career, from her earliest practice in which she turned the camera on herself as subject, through to grander-scale works incorporating larger, ensemble casts.
Works on display in the ticketed exhibition include Hibiscus rosa sinensis, 2010, which Tiatia refers to as her first major work as a professional artist, transposing Mexican poet Enrique González Martínez’s rejection of imported European Romantic tradition onto a Pacific frame of reference rejecting Western-constructed images of Polynesia.
The pearl, 2021, was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in response to an exhibition of works by French artist Henri Matisse, while Narcissus, 2019, uses a cast of 40 to reimagine the Greco-Roman myth of a young man who falls in love with his own reflection, to reflect on global selfie culture fueled through social media.
Angela Tiatia, Narcissus (still), 2019, single-channel 2K high definition video. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney © the artist
Tiatia said looking back across two decades of work has been an opportunity to reflect on the enduring questions that have shaped her practice.
“While each work responds to a particular moment, together they speak to a sustained engagement with systems of power and the complexities of our shared histories,” Tiatia said.
“It’s a privilege to present this exhibition in Newcastle, and to share it with audiences alongside The Matildas, a work that celebrates collective strength and the power of representation.”
Newcastle Art Gallery will also present the first gallery showing of The Matildas, 2025, outside the National Portrait Gallery.
Filmed across three continents, five cities and seven shoots, the 23-minute video portrait captures the presence, emotion and mental focus of all 23 players from the CommBank Matildas FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 Squad, including Newcastle’s own Emily van Egmond and Clare Wheeler.
The video portrait celebrates a pivotal moment in Australian sporting history, capturing moments of connection, strength and emotion in an unmissable cinematic experience that will be presented free to the public.
National Portrait Gallery Director Bree Pickering said Tiatia’s moving-image portrait is a celebration of a squad that transformed Australia.
“In 2023, the Matildas brought us together and encouraged millions of Australians who didn’t believe sport was for them to get out on the pitch and cheer from the stands,” Ms Pickering said.
“Angela’s tender and powerful approach to the depiction of women through the lens created a portrait of 23 extraordinary athletes and one team. We are thrilled to share The Matildas with audiences at the Newcastle Art Gallery.”
A recipient of multiple awards, including the 2018 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, Tiatia has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including in the United States, Germany, South America, New Zealand, London and the in collateral exhibitions of the Venice Biennale, Italy.
Her work is held in major public collections including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Tickets for Angela Tiatia: Muse are on sale tomorrow via the Newcastle Art Gallery website. Entry to The Matildas, 2025 is free to the public.
The exhibition runs from 26 September 2026 to 7 February 2027.
It will open alongside City of Newcastle’s flagship multi-arts festival, New Annual, which features 10 days of art, music, theatre and performance from 25 September to 4 October 2026.
The full program for New Annual will be unveiled on Friday 31 July.