Lighthouse Arts

Australian Gothic offers a powerful way to express the darker, more complex realities of living in Australia—stories that have been shaped by landscape, memory, violence, myth, and lived experience.

The theme allows us to share honest, unconventional, and deeply personal narratives. It invites us to highlight the grittier side of Newcastle, a city shaped by colonisation, industry, and an unsettling history that continues to echo through its architecture and coastline.

Each artist brings a different entry point into the genre, exploring ideas such as:
– Personal memories of rural landscapes and abandoned spaces.
– Ecological perspectives that reveal nature as indifferent and unruly.
– Explorations of subconscious fears represented in land, flora and fauna.
– Reflections on growing up in Australia and local history.

This exhibition builds on the momentum of our first collective project, Australian Gothic zine (2025), which received immediate local, interstate, and international interest. The zine sparked a growing creative community around the theme, with this exhibition being the natural next step.

Keeping in line with the ethos of Australian Gothic, the Lighthouse itself becomes part of its narrative. Its architecture and coastal location enhance the mood of isolation, exposure and unease that sit at the heart of Australian Gothic, shaping how audiences experience the work.

To visit the Lighthouse one must travel with intent. The span of time it takes to get up the hill, be it on foot or by vehicle, gives a person the opportunity to leave the busyness, distractions and day-to-day mindset behind and enter a different space: one that is both domestic and strange. It is a perfect place to encounter something unexpected, unusual and thought provoking, something to dwell upon and turn over in one’s thoughts as one heads back down the hill.

Drawing on scholarship by Turcotte (1998) and Nelson (2019), we recognise that Australian Gothic has long explored environmental hostility, colonisation, alienation, and the familiar made strange.

Our exhibition continues this tradition through a contemporary, place-based lens, inviting audiences to look again at the local landscapes they think they know, and to sit with the uncanny, the unsettling and the unresolved.

Saturday 12 September — Sunday 1 November
Open on Saturdays and Sundays 10 am – 4 pm
Closed public holidays.
Free entry. Donations welcome. 

About: Castle Art Collective
Emerging artists creating in Newcastle/Mulubinba on Awabakal & Worimi Country.